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The Modos Paper Monitor

modos.tech

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Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#61

Post by dredmorbius »

londons_explore wrote: post #11

So... The downside of eink is: To set a pixel to anything other than white or black requires a distracting and time consuming pattern of white and black flashes. But... There exists multiple different patterns of flashes that end up with the same grey scale shade. So the logical solution seems to therefore be for neighbouring pixels to use different flash patterns such that when viewed from a distance the flashes are…

I don't know how current your experience is, but on a year-old Onyx BOOX, I'm generally not seeing the flicker issue you're describing provided display mode is appropriate to application context.

In Normal/Regal mode, yes, there's a flash as a page is refreshed. This mode should be used only for applications which use page-based (rather than scroll-based) navigation, and which don't have animated elements.

"Speed mode" works exceptionally well for virtually anything else --- most web browsers and even some video, as well as Termux (a terminal-based Linux environment for Android).

The higher-speed modes offer even better refresh rates. The image quality loss / ghosting is only very slightly higher for A2 mode, though for X-Mode it's quite noticeable. The latter is really only for video viewing, or perhaps gaming if that's your thing. Neither of those are uses well-suited to E-ink.

For general reading (PDFs, EPubs, etc.), podcasting (AntennaPod), or web browsing (EinkBro, which is truly awesome, or FennicFox), I prefer e-ink to OLED tablets.

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#62

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

londons_explore wrote: post #60
robinsoh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the world of eink is filled with patents and lawsuits, and I think that if I implemented this and it worked well I could never sell it. Even if I gave it away for free, I'd probably have lawyers banging on my door wanting to take away my home. I work in the display industry. I've never heard anything like what you describe, except on HN comments and blogs that use HN comments as citations. Look at my comment hi…

[patent links. You may or may not want to click] There are lots of patents on electrophoretic displays.[1] And unlike some other industries, these patents are actually used in lawsuits by some players [2]. And anonymous insiders suggest that litigation and threats of litigation, together with enforced secrecy agreements really shape the industry [3]. [1]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=electrophoretic+display..…

A link to a single patent lawsuit and a link to an old HN post from a brand new throwaway account which itself provides no citations or links? That's not very persuasive.

Both Dasung and Onyx have been able to bring e-ink monitors using their technologies to market so if there's a significant barrier, it's not apparent.

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#63

Post by dredmorbius »

The medium is the message^W affordance.

During the aughts, I got used to saying "Linux is not Windows" --- if you're looking for a Microsoft experience on a Free Software operating system ... you're liable to be disappointed.

If you accept the strengths, and weaknesses, of a platform, you're going to be far happier.

The first computers I used didn't have e-ink displays. They had ink displays. Teletype access to an early Unix system, mostly offering BSD games. No, I didn't do Real Work on those systems....

But I was doing real work on glass-tty VT-200 Wyse terminals about a decade later, also on campus-wide Unix servers. (Benefit: walk into any terminal room, log on, and all my work was Just There.)

As I've noted for a while, E-Ink has features which differ from emissive (OLED / LCD) displays:

- Persistence is free. Once the display is set, it does not change, even with power shut off.

- Pixels are cheap. Current displays tend around 220--300 DPI. That's the effective resolution of most laserprinters (given toner drift and paper coarseness).

- Refreshes are ... slowish. Not seconds, but 4-10 Hz is a typically upper end, rather than 60--120 FPS of an emissive display. Higher-quality refreshes may be slower.

- Colors are nonexistent to few. My monochrome display offers 16 greyscale shades, though with dithering and/or halftoning, that increases. Photographs appear slightly posterised without those. Colour displays exist, though they're limited in size/format, muted in saturation, slower than B&W e-ink, and carry a price premium.

- Paginated navigation is strongly preferred to scrolling. A single whole-screen flush is much better than scrolling a pixel at a time. This is where EInkBro really shines over conventional tablet browsers, in that it supports paginated navigation through a web page.

- Displays are reflective rather than emissive. The brighter the ambient light, the easier the display is to read, with direct sunlight being the optimum. I suspect colour displays will also reflect a mix of ink-vs-light colour design / mixing.

Ultimately, e-ink applications and platforms should play to the medium's strengths. E-Ink does fixed text and graphics exceptionally well. Operating systems, graphical shells, and controls which reflect this should do well. Those that fight these characteristics will deliver disappointing experiences.

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#64

Post by ladyattis »

dredmorbius wrote: post #63

The medium is the message^W affordance . During the aughts, I got used to saying "Linux is not Windows" --- if you're looking for a Microsoft experience on a Free Software operating system ... you're liable to be disappointed. If you accept the strengths, and weaknesses, of a platform, you're going to be far happier. The first computers I used didn't have e-ink displays. They had ink displays. Teletype access to an e…

Yep, I think there's no need to make e-ink into a competitor for oled or lcd monitors. Something like a tablet or small purpose built computer like a POS machine with built in scanner and card reader is something I think would fit best for this kind of display rather than forcing LCD/OLED to handle small form factors but somehow compete on power usage.

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#65

Post by robinsoh »

londons_explore wrote: post #60
robinsoh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the world of eink is filled with patents and lawsuits, and I think that if I implemented this and it worked well I could never sell it. Even if I gave it away for free, I'd probably have lawyers banging on my door wanting to take away my home. I work in the display industry. I've never heard anything like what you describe, except on HN comments and blogs that use HN comments as citations. Look at my comment hi…

[patent links. You may or may not want to click] There are lots of patents on electrophoretic displays.[1] And unlike some other industries, these patents are actually used in lawsuits by some players [2]. And anonymous insiders suggest that litigation and threats of litigation, together with enforced secrecy agreements really shape the industry [3]. [1]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=electrophoretic+display..…

> There are lots of patents on electrophoretic displays.

There are lots of patents on software.

Could you explain your point in greater detail?

> And unlike some other industries, these patents are actually used in lawsuits by some players

I'm not able to follow. I work in the display industry. What lawsuits are you referencing? What players? How is it any different than the software industry? Anonymous insiders? You mean one HN post that appears nonsensical to a display industry insider who commented on that post and said it sounds like sour grapes from a guy who bought a few displays from Samsung LCD and expects Samsung to give him commercial pricing terms and special support and handholding for his startup?

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#66

Post by azeirah »

oops wrote: post #54
Toadtoad wrote: post #4

Demo of the music video "Bad Apple" being played on this monitor (or at least an iteration of it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4

I wonder what the display's lifetime is with this kind of usage? I see someone asked in the YT comments but it is unanswered. I can't find any official data (as usual with eink) but I have heard that an eink pixel's lifetime is around 10 million pixel transitions. Not sure where that number comes from or how accurate it is and how it varies from one display to the next. But if true, you'd get only a couple days with…

I would assume at the very least the people at Modos would run into that problem really soon if the pixels start dying after 10 million refreshes.

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#67

Post by JKCalhoun »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #8

They mention the issue of dithering changing "everywhere" when e.g. a mouse cursor is moving, which is obviously distracting. I wonder if you couldn't make an error diffusion dithering technique where the amount of error to diffuse is mollified by the signed distance from the moving pixels? * Seed signed distance function with -1 in all pixels that changed, +1 in static pixels * Use a fast marching method to re-initi…

Blue noise in error diffusion dithering was a thing some decades ago. Perhaps there are better algorithms?:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither#Digital_photography_and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise#Blue_noise

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#68

Post by bityard »

HidyBush wrote: post #33

It's incredible how as a society we have accepted that people must spend hours upon hours glued to screens that were never made to be reading devices. It would be like if we invented sofas before chairs and so every office worker needs to awkwardly work on a sofa instead if sitting on a nice Herman Miller

Were trees made to be reading devices?

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#69

Post by russh »

robinsoh wrote: post #42
bayindirh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The methods or refreshing e-ink displays are called "Wave Functions" in e-ink parlance, and they're actually implemented in software. However, somehow they're so closely guarded, and even if you have top of the line e-ink reader, it might not come with a license for a nice Wave Function which refreshes your display very nicely. For example, one of the most attractive features of Kindles is they use the best Wave Func…

> The methods or refreshing e-ink displays are called "Wave Functions" in e-ink parlance, and they're actually implemented in software. I've never heard of "wave functions" in the context of electrophoretic displays nor have I ever seen a widely used commercial e-ink controller implement a software update method. Do you mean waveform table? All of them that I've seen in commercial use rely on hardware updates to perf…

https://github.com/vroland/epdiy/tree/master/src/epd_driver/...

Re: The Modos Paper Monitor

#70

Post by AlanYx »

meon46 wrote: post #3

I know a lot a people seem to prefer e-paper to LCDs. However, I have not yet found papers that could show a significant benefit with regards to eye strain of e-paper over other types of displays. If you are outside and have reflections, shure - but inside?

There is some academic work in this area. If you're searching, use the terms "electrophoretic", "EPD", or "epaper" rather than "eink". Most focuses on either readability or subjective evaluation rather than eyestrain though. There's also a lot of related work on optimal contrast/luminance ratios independent of display type. Generally I think the reason people subjectively prefer eink is because the research tends to find that (for users that do not require visual accessibility accomodations) readability decreases after the luminance contrast ratio exceeds about 10 (e.g., Wang and Chen 2000), which puts eink in a natural sweet spot, and the need to increase LCD backlight brightness in well-lit rooms (e.g., Miyao et al. 2016).
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