A $50 color e-ink display (letter size) could replace newspapers and magazines. (The same goes for a flexible display.) Make it dust and water, and people will use it everywhere (bath, beach, restroom, etc.).
I wonder why Amazon hasn't updated their bigger Kindle DX for 6 years? Color e-ink displays that can play small videos at a good enough framerate exist for 3+ years, though no reader devices I know of make use of them.
>I wonder why Amazon hasn't updated their bigger Kindle DX for 6 years?
It didn't sell people didn't want it, it was way to big for most users, and way way too expensive (~400$ for the 3G version).
People aren't going to pay iPad prices for an ereader of the same size, weight and these days almost the same battery life....
I love my kindle voyage but given the choice between a Kindle DX and an iPad air which costs almost the same most people would get an iPad and so would I.
not the 3g voyage, unfortunately. with mostly default settings (including auto-brightness on the screen), mine barely lasts a plane-ride across the country.
my partner's dx, on the other hand, had no problems whatsoever.
eInk achieves excellent battery life by being completely unpowered when the screen isn't changing. When you press the "next page" button, you're basically booting the whole device, having it render the next page, then shutting it off again. If you're using any sort of backlight (as "auto-brightness" suggests) then you won't get that benefit and I'm not surprised your battery life is more like that of a traditional tablet. The DX doesn't have a backlight so wouldn't have that problem. If you turn your backlight off then you should see similar results.
turn off backlight, turn off 3g, turn off touch, and turn off force feedback (i am not sure if turning off touch will actually render it to act like a dx).
Anywhere within a city? Larger populations have been proven to have more instances of crime for various reasons.
Further, if you're wearing a massive, expensive pair of goggles that simultaneously broadcast your wealth and block your vision, you're gonna get mugged. It's just a matter of time.
Pickpockets have been a perennial concern on the DC Metro system. One of my coworkers had his iPod pulled out of his hand, resting on his stomach, while he was sitting with his eyes closed. Transit isn't somewhere I'd want to be blind to what was going on around me.
I wonder if this will evolve into large flat screen tvs (50 inch plus) folding down when not in use (just like a portable projector screen). That would be a nice feature for those who don't like having a huge TV on display.
This commercial LG LED[1], suitable to be on 24/7 has a power reduction mode at 100 watt. Let's assume that works when it is in screensaver/art mode and it would use 2.4 kWh/day.
A Tesla model S can get 240 wh/km, so the energy use of the display would power an electric car for 10 km. so for a year then it would be the equivalent of moving an electric car 3650 km. I don't drive that much, but it is actually about half of my yearly driving averaged over the last 10 years. Personally I rather turn that screen off and power my next car with it.
Edit: just saw you said 16 hours. Well you can do the math. :)
LG also intended to make a 55-inch flexible display which can be sticked to the walls by magnets. I'm not sure if they have released any latest news about that, but they are planning to make it possible.
Here's a post about LG's 55-inch flexible ultra thin display.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/20/lgs-wallpaper-con...
The big issue with those types of displays is that the rest of the electronics can't fit in that package.
Big screen TV's require quite a bit of processing power especially for all those neat 4K 3D 120hz 1000hz "image processing" uber smart interwebs TV's people insist on buying ;)
So while I don't doubt that LG can make a 55" flexible display I don't see them being able to make a 55" flexible 1mm TV in the next decade, the hardware package which is required to drive those things is quite insane and with Samsung/Sony one uping each other with 8K and 12K TV's all the time that's only going to get bigger.
A 1080 non smart TV with maybe basic DLNA support could possibly be doable, but 4K with all the smart TV features people expect no way...
The big issue with those types of displays is that the rest of the electronics can't fit in that package.
If you make it like a roll up projector screen then you could fit the electronics in the top 'bar' that the screen rolls into. You could also add the speakers into the same bar, making for a fairly compact package.
That's quite possible but it's not the form factor from LG's TV concept I just don't see them fitting a full TV under 5mm like in their concept, not in the next 10 years or so.
OK, how about a plug behind the TV and a wire that runs along/behind the wall to a big back box stashed in a closet somewhere. I mean it's going to need power, so you can't completely get rid of all the wires.
Today 10 years ago we didn't yet have Twitter, for example. BlueRay was only a year old. I imagine many folks were still looking at CRT televisions as something to buy for their family.
Look at the TTM for OLED screens or flexible screens for that matter...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_display
POC to product is 10-15 year Prototype/Concept to product is usually 5-8 years.
I wrote a few college research papers on commercial OLED tech back in 2004... that one never got enough love, though the price fixing and profiteering the big display makers were doing in the 00's makes me think that it's possible they squashed some of that advancement to try and milk their LCD profits as much as possible.
Can't much off the electronics be off-board? Given I could buy a Fire, Apple, Roku etc. I've always wondered whether there is a market for just a panel with a single HDMI input.
Not sure if you can drive 4K and above with 3D with 1mm thick screen like LG showed.
They've "cheated" on the demo's the screens were fed with through a flex connector and had only a few still images on them, even the LCD driver is something that would require a bigger package than what you can put on flex today, and those solid state components aren't flexible...
>I've always wondered whether there is a market for just a panel with a single HDMI input.
Checkout the Korean white label TV's and monitors Ebay they use LG and Samsung panels usually come with the most basic features (the vast majority of them don't have a tuner cheaper, and avoids hideous import taxes for most the world) but then again you get a 65" 4K TV for less than 2000$....
e.g.
http://stores.ebay.com/Dream-Seller/UHD-3840-x-2160-/_i.html...
> They've "cheated" on the demo's the screens were fed with through a flex connector and had only a few still images on them
How is that cheating? Display technology goes through a bunch of stages before being ready for mass consumption and the first stage after getting 'off the drawing board' would be to feed it data and to see what it looks like with stills. Still images are much harder to get right than motion in display technology because you have just about forever to determine what it looks like. With moving images the eye is much more forgiving.
Hence the quotation marks "cheated" isn't in a bad way, just pointing that the driving part of the display isn't on a nice thin flex package, and we've yet to seen these displays produce high refresh rate images there's a reason why prototypes always show stills things go funky once you have to start turning 8 million odd pixels on and off....
Really, this is a huge step for display tech and it seems a bit much to demand systems integration at that same level right away as well. This is not a product, it's a technology demo.
Which is exactly what I'm saying, were quite a few years away from this being really commercial judging by the current track record of display tech probably about 10 years until its some what widely available in fully integrated systems.
They could probably get away with putting everything except the speakers into a huge power brick. I don't think many people care about poorly implemented smart TV features and instead will plug a Chromecast or whatever into HDMI slot.
Surprise! Much of CES news is vaporware asymptotically approaching the market. The Verge even says "We've seen this before, but it's still super cool" - so then it's not news.
In theory it should be less. LCD's start with a white light, then attenuate it through red, green and blue filters. OLED's don't lose light to generate colour, they produce red, green and blue light directly, so all other factors being equal should have a significantly higher potential efficiency.
I keep hearing about stuff like this, but where's the market for it? Who wants to buy an expensive display that will likely get damaged very fast due to its flexibility ?
The intermediary steps are not so financially rewarding or even interesting, but the end game is significant.
Durable, flexible screens allow a whole series of new technology.
Off the top of my head:
Imagine a laptop with a screen that seamlessly folds in four. For travelling work you use a quadrant, for office work or presentations you fold it out to full size.
Imagine a screen that folds around your arm like a cuff - perfect for leisure activities like cycling or diving, or work that requires both hands (an alternative to google glass style displays).
If you can make something durable and flexible, there are a lot of new things you can do that you currently can't.
>Imagine a laptop with a screen that seamlessly folds in four.
Flexibility isn't folding, you can't fold these displays that's one of the main issues with them they'll crease and then break.
>Imagine a screen that folds around your arm like a cuff - perfect for leisure activities like cycling or diving, or work that requires both hands (an alternative to google glass style displays).
A screen also fits in a pocket, there is no reason to put it on a cuff I like that Nokia demo like the next guy but come on... why would you replace your 4-6" display with a much smaller one? not to mention that a smart watch/wristband would work just as well.
And if you want to curve a display around something that would fit your wrist you don't need a "flexible" display you can mold traditional TFT's also.
P.S. If I'm doing something with both hands the last thing i need is a display on my wrist distracting me ;)
>If you can make something durable and flexible, there are a lot of new things you can do that you currently can't.
Not really sure you can do quite a few neat things in a different way but hardly new things.
So - real life example where I personally would have benefited from wearable screens.
In another life I was a mailman using a bike.
To do that efficiently you steer the bike with one hand, keep the mail on a tray in front of the bike and deliver it with the other hand as you keep biking.
When I was doing a new area I needed to bring a map to know what way to go.
Having that map be interactive and visual would have been a real benefit to me - it was an A4 sheet that I needed to stop the bike to read. Audio wouldnt have been as good, as I was veering, slowing down and accelerating a lot so the directions would have been confusing. It's a situation where something strapped to my arm would have been a lot more effective - a paper map was too small to strap to the arm, but an interactive map would have been perfect.
Google glass, or a flexible screen would have both solved that situation for me.
the flexibility many only be needed once in some applications. Ship millions of them flat and have downstream manufacturers integrate them as they see fit. It could open up many options that current require very expensive custom manufacturing. Another area that would benefit and not need to use the flexibility often would be advertisement. Throw a bunch of these up on pillars or other odd places.
Plus you would have to think that LG has examined your very same issue. They may have reached the point to where they have that handled or mitigated sufficiently to give a good lifetime.
I wonder why Amazon hasn't updated their bigger Kindle DX for 6 years? Color e-ink displays that can play small videos at a good enough framerate exist for 3+ years, though no reader devices I know of make use of them.