E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper • Hacker News Board

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#161

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 7:41 AM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #24

The picture presented has 133134 colors in it from my very rough calculation. That is not at all how the display will look.

It's probably a simple photoshop as the image even seems to be higher resolution than the hardware.

But counting unique pixel colors in a photo of a display tells you nothing about the display.

Find a picture of a gameboy screen (10 colors) or gameboy color (56 colors) and send the jpg through that tool. You should be able to realize the problem from simple intuition about what a photo is.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#162

Post by haneefmubarak » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 8:17 AM UTC

Qwertious wrote: post #158

haneefmubarak wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably at least 1 Hz to even be slightly usable as a screen you are composing or editing on, but current refresh times are multiple seconds so there's still likely a long way to go...

Current refresh rates for sections of the screen are 20ms. Full-screen refresh is a full second, sure, but you don't need that if you're just typing.

Huh. I wasn't aware that they had such fast partial refresh for color ones - I thought that was only for the B&W kind. Things improve quickly I guess!

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#163

Post by bryanrasmussen » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #137

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 20 years might be a reasonable amount of time for hardware, which requires a heavy outlay in money to produce and which does not have almost zero cost to replicate, but not for software which can generally be copied for nothing and does not cost much to produce.

Hardware, 20 years? 20 years ago, Nokia 3310 was released. For consumer hardware, that's still a very very long time to hold a patent on something. Specialized scientific/industrial hardware, maybe... consumer goods... way too long. But that's just my personal opinion.

Did the Nokia 3310 have any hardware patents related to its release?

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#164

Post by extropy » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #159

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, make the cost to renew a patent each year increase exponentially, with the base proportional to the worth of the individual/company filing the patent at the time of filing. That ties the duration of a patent directly to how much value it provides to the company over time, which is the rationale for having patents in the first place. A company could only afford to hold onto a patent for as long as it ca…

>the cost to renew a patent Why do you think patents can be renewed?

GP probably meant maintenance fees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_fee_(patent)

Would be nice to see increasing annual maintenance fee. 1K for first year 3K for second, 10K for third and so on. After 6 years or so you either make/pay millions of give it up.

Should drastically reduce the amount of junk patents. It it's not worth at least a few million not worth applying.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#165

Post by extropy » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #140

nicoburns wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. It just entrenches the position of those who have money, to the disadvantage of everyone else.

No it doesn’t. The whole point of charging exorbitant fees is that the money is being pulled out of the company. That’s the opposite of entrenched.

Right and someone at the board meeting will ask - what if we dropped that 10B annual patent fee.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#166

Post by Jallal » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

rubinesq wrote: post #134

listerOfSmeg wrote: post #6

E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. E-ink the company has tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. E-ink the technology wont go any where for 10-15 years when that next big batch of patents expire. Its just like 3D displays and VR there will be a massive consumer push new batches of patents will be filed pro…

> E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. I don't really understand how this is true. If I google, I don't see any evidence that any patent or block of patents is blocking the "tech". Could you specify which specific patent is blocking? > tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. But... you do realize there's lot…

There's something very fishy about ClearInk.

I checked their website to see what their technology looks like. I wanted to see how their product compare to a eInk screen use in many devices (such as Kindle/Kobo/ReMarkable), as this is the kind of products that interests me. It turns out that all the pictures shows the back of what I expect to be tablets/phone prototypes (or maybe it's just stock photos), and not a single time the screen.

It's almost comical : you advertise for a screen tech, but you carefully avoid to show how such screen looks like. Definitely a red flag.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#167

Post by RedComet » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 8:47 AM UTC

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #93

oezi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why patent duration should be tied to product lifecycle length. Pharma where you need 10 years to pull off clinical trials could keep 23 years, but consumer hardware where new generation of devices launch within 2 years should be limited to 10 years. Software should likely be limited to 5 years.

Alternatively, make the cost to renew a patent each year increase exponentially, with the base proportional to the worth of the individual/company filing the patent at the time of filing. That ties the duration of a patent directly to how much value it provides to the company over time, which is the rationale for having patents in the first place. A company could only afford to hold onto a patent for as long as it ca…

Yeah, sounds cool. That way ma & pa lose their patent right away and Google keeps it forever.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#168

Post by rubinesq » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

Jallal wrote: post #166

rubinesq wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. I don't really understand how this is true. If I google, I don't see any evidence that any patent or block of patents is blocking the "tech". Could you specify which specific patent is blocking? > tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. But... you do realize there's lot…

There's something very fishy about ClearInk. I checked their website to see what their technology looks like. I wanted to see how their product compare to a eInk screen use in many devices (such as Kindle/Kobo/ReMarkable), as this is the kind of products that interests me. It turns out that all the pictures shows the back of what I expect to be tablets/phone prototypes (or maybe it's just stock photos), and not a sin…

> It's almost comical : you advertise for a screen tech, but you carefully avoid to show how such screen looks like. Definitely a red flag.

Are you an E Ink employee or something trying to badmouth clearink? Because you can just go to youtube and search clearink and find clear videos of their products from various conferences.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#169

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 10:08 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #163

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware, 20 years? 20 years ago, Nokia 3310 was released. For consumer hardware, that's still a very very long time to hold a patent on something. Specialized scientific/industrial hardware, maybe... consumer goods... way too long. But that's just my personal opinion.

Did the Nokia 3310 have any hardware patents related to its release?

I was just saying that 20 years ago is "old".

Nokia probably had a gajillion GSM patents that they used to make the phone, and a bunch of other companies had to pay them money for many years to build 2g/GSM phones.

Qualcomm and a few other companies have a bunch of patent for 4g tech, so even now (when we're rolling out 5G), it's practically impossible to make a modern...ish modem without giving atleast some money to one of those companies, and 4G is "old tech" already.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#170

Post by maratc » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 10:13 AM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #80

So I’ll ask here as there may be some lurkers who can help me in my quest: I am trying to find a basic e-reader. I have a simple want: I want a built in browser that will let me download ePub and pdf etc from the browser. I’m not interested in bundled bookstores. I’m not keen on having to load books onto it via a pc app nor emailing them nor having an Amazon account neither. I just want to be able to browse and downl…

In the same place, I think I have contradicting wishes.

The hardware resources needed for "basic e-reader" and the ones for, basically, a modern browsing machine are very different. Something gotta give there, you will either have an overpowered and overpriced reader, or a clumsy browser. Additionally, having to type on a virtual keyboard on a e-ink screen is not a top-notch experience.

Kobo looks like a good direction for me, I can have my reading matter formatted exactly as I wish and USB-transfer it over. For my parents who are not tech-savvy, Kindle is great, as I can prepare books and email them to their kindle.