A Michigan company says it will have an e-book-capable rival to E Ink out in a year with resolution at least as good as a typical LCD’s. A high-res HDTV version with fulll motion is also said to be coming. The low-power technology in the near future is to surpass E Ink in such areas as color and full-motion capabilities. Plus, these rollable displays will cost a fraction of what E Ink displays do.
So the company says–I’m remaining neutral. Check out a .wmv video of the 32-by-32-pixel display and the full PDFed press release from Quantum Paper, briefly mentioned here earlier.
Time line requested
I myself will keep an open mind, knowing that Michigan just happens to be the state that gave us the Tucker, with a padded dash, safety belts and other goodies years before they were fashionable. While the e-paper in the video is primitive, Quantum CEO Michael Feldman says it’s because of the constraints of hand-making it, so to speak. Bigger, far more sophisticated displays, according to him, will be on the way in months with decent color and all that. I just wish the press release had given a timeline, so people would realize that Feldman–who, by the way, says he knows Tucker’s grandson–wasn’t claiming to have full color and HDTV res now. I’ve asked Mike for an approximate time line to keep expectations realistic.
Getting at the truth: Again, remember that I am merely repeating what Mike Feldman has said; I have not verified it. Ask questions in the comment box, and I’ll forward them to Mike and his CTO, William J. Ray (see old bio and technical article written while Ray was running Group Info Tech, Inc.–apparently part of Quantum now). Or if Mike and Bill want, they can reply directly, just so they remind people of their affiliations.
In other display news…
Now on to three other technologies–oil-based displays, the AM OLED and promising new e-paper that Fujitsu will put on the market in 15 months.
Oil-based display: The image is of an oil-based display from Liquavista, apparently a Philips spin-off. Smartly, Philips is hardly about to gamble everything on E Ink. More details about electrowetting-based tech:
Electrowetting is a science that has become a well established discipline for many years and is used in a broad range of applications across many different industries.
Electrowetting makes use of the natural forces intrinsic to an oil and water interface and methods developed for the manipulation of these forces within hydrophobic (unwettable) materials. An oil and water mixture is encapsulated by a highly hydrophobic material which causes the water to avoid the surface by forcing the oil to act as an intermediary.
The wetting properties of the hydrophobic surface can be modified by the application of an electrical voltage (hence the name Electrowetting) and the surface becomes increasingly hydrophilic (wettable).
As the previously unwettable (hydrophobic) surface becomes increasingly attractive to the water, the oil is forced to adopt an alternative form. This manipulation of the properties is what forms the basis of Electrowetting applications.
The AM OLED: “While many makers of flat-panel displays are focusing on the TV segment to drive future growth, some companies are betting on what industry players dub as the next-generation display for cellular phones and music players: active matrix light emitting diodes,” reports Dow Jones from Taipei. “The displays, called AM OLEDs for short, are brighter, thinner and have faster response time than the thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays, or TFT-LCDs, widely used today as screens in mobile phones, MP3 players, computer monitors and TVs. Given the absence of a back light unit and color filter found in TFT-LCDs, material costs can be cheaper than LCDs. In addition, companies that already manufacture LCD panels can use existing infrastructure to make AM OLED displays with only limited alterations and additional investment.” Notice the mention of cheaper costs and “existing infrastructure”? That’s what really got me interested. It isn’t as if OLEDs themselves are new.
Fujitsu e-paper: Alex at MobileRead has the lowdown. Key facts: bendable, full color, ready for the market in 15 months, video and slideshow available.
Has there been any more information relative to Quantum Paper
No. We’ll see if the company lives up to its promises. – David