This is just gorgeous and begs the question: what is wrong with e-ink and their non-marketing of their technology?<p>You can get LCDs in almost any form and size for very little money, but e-ink displays are still rare and expensive. I love my kindle (ironically even Amazon seems to be very slow in enhancing it), but I would love larger e-ink screens and display devices. Like with good old black and white displays, there is zero penalty for running them 24/7.
The newspaper is a great implemantation of this, but I also would like to have a large e-ink display for displaying b/w photographs.<p>And of course, a reader, large enough to cover the area of an open book (so almost A3) would be a dream. Displaying a double-page of any print at 100% would make for the ultimate e-reading experience. Would be the ideal accessory to any programmers desk, but also for any scientist.<p>So the big question is: why does all of this not exist?
That display is $1.5k ea, and comes with an NDA mostly forbidding you to even think about it, much less think about the possibility of letting the thought of permitting your mouth talk about it cross your mind.
Something like this would probably be a step back towards sanity (vs my current habit of consuming news and social media from my iPad, which generally makes me unhappy, but darn it's addictive). Just the headlines and leads. If I want more, I can check the full website later.<p>If it was $300 instead of $1500+, I'd be all in. Heck, a larger format Kindle might work too. The current book reader is just too small for newspaper consumption.
The world would have looked differently if the Mirasol technology ever took of. It was a large e-ink that could do color and had a refresh rate good enough for video. Most impressively, it could have been produced at existing display plants with some modifications. Unfortunately, the MEMS technology was close but no quite there as the displays degraded. Beautiful displays however, extremely energy proficient, and absolutely splendid in daylight. A bit dull, but very comfortable indoors.
This is awesome!<p>However as the discussion from earlier today shows (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827833" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827833</a>), it is still very expensive.<p>The display used in this article costs about $1500 (<a href="https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-monochrome-epaper-display-ed312tt2/" rel="nofollow">https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-monochrome-epap...</a>). Which is a bit too high for me to want to make something similar for myself.
What a great idea, it's too bad the display costs $1,500 but I suppose that is partially because it includes a Linux controller.<p>One thing I also learned is that you can download a PDF of the New York Times front page every day!
Do other newspapers publish scans of their print editions? From the article, nytimes:<p><a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/10/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/10/nytfrontpage/scan...</a>
Cringeworthy statement from the manufacturer:<p>(I) THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND
(II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
I am still waiting for someone to introduce a Kindle-style device specifically designed for comic books. I am shocked that Comixology or Amazon have not done this yet. Using iPads and other tablets is not a good solution. These devices are too heavy, the consume too much energy, they are distracting with all the apps, notifications, etc.
> 1500$ display<p>> (I) THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND
(II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.<p>> 500$ driver board with the same terms<p>> E Ink’s NDA prevents me from sharing the source code<p>It amazes me every single time I think about it: Why is this company working so hard to keep their products away from the public?<p>Additionally, how did they convince them they're not a consumer?<p>My mode of acquiring e-ink displays is looking for e-reader replacement parts and data sheets online. Never interacting with the e-ink company isn't only easier (please stop screaming at me that I suck if I'm a consumer, thanks), but a lot cheaper. Haven't found a knock-off for the 31" screen yet, unfortunately, that would be quite cool.
For $1500 you can buy a 55" 4K OLED screen.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/LG-OLED55C9PUA-Alexa-Built-Ultra/dp/B07PTN79PG" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/LG-OLED55C9PUA-Alexa-Built-Ultra/dp/B...</a>
All that beautiful design work and it still has a cord hanging off of it?<p>A bit of drywall and electrical work would hide the cord completely; but I understand if that isn't possible in an apartment.
Reading all the negativity here reminds me of the iPod reception back in 2001! This is prescient y’all. This is the technology future I want, not that dystopian blade runner world!
"That looks awesome!" * Looks at website * "$1,500!"<p>I'm really looking forward to this price point coming down.<p>EEVblog was talking about an interesting effect where LCDs can potentially become a cheaper alternative to "e-paper" [1]. An LCD panel of similar size is significantly cheaper due to products such as laptops, monitors, TVs, etc.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldolTAeXs_w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldolTAeXs_w</a>
They can take the daily screenshots from my side project [1] and rotate them on their very cool screen.<p>Or they can take the high-fidelity pdfs from Newseum [2] and rotate them.<p>[1] - <a href="https://newshots.simplecto.com" rel="nofollow">https://newshots.simplecto.com</a> -- Daily screenshots of hundreds of publications<p>[2] - <a href="https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/" rel="nofollow">https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/</a>
This looks like a very interesting piece and project. I'd love to read it. But, it's on medium and without an paid account i cannot access it. And at this point, shelling 50 bucks for medium doesn't seem the smart thing to do... This applies to any article on medium posted on HN.
Give me the same but in a form of a thin laptop. I would use it to code/browse HN/Gopherspace and to read media/play music. Some gaming with Nethack/frotz would be acceptable, too.
It's a great idea, although kind of pricey, like most E-Ink stuff. (E-Ink was supposed to be cheap, but that didn't work out.) You could probably sell some of these to executive offices.
I love my Kindle's e-ink display for reading books and news articles. I simply cannot enjoy consuming this content as much with any other medium. But not only do I enjoy to read, but I also enjoy to write as well. I would love to have an e-ink monitor where I can type away my thoughts on my mechanical keyboard in a distraction free interface. I am surprised something like this doesn't exist. I would be more inclined to write more if it did.
At this point OLED 4K screens of the same dimensions are <i>cheaper</i> than e-ink. I really hope the the prices come down because these are just so awesome.
I was thinking of getting a large E Ink display and whenever I would have a guest the cameras in the house could capture their face and use a GAN or some model to change to create an image using their face and update the display just for a few seconds to spook guests. I studied E Ink displays and the low contrast ratio and enormous costs flushed my prank in a drain.
I like e-ink but I don't really get this. Who are they trying to sell this to? I'm assuming they're targeting businesses that want updatable informational displays because I can't imagine any person that would prefer standing in front of a wall in their home to read the newspaper instead of using a handheld device on their couch.
Insanely cool.<p>E-ink is just one of those technologies that ought to be so much further along, but I've always gotten the gut feeling that the company that controls this tech is just so out of touch.<p>Reading how the software can't be shared... I shouldn't have been surprised.
This guy thought about every aspect of the UX except the fact that reading a newspaper from the wall is very bad ergonomically because the reading-height is most often not at eye-height because of the large size of the display!
would be cool with one that just shows a fresh copy of the times on a wall everyday but picks one for the current day from random ones in the past. or maybe make it fun where it picks one from the past with similar headlines.
The only place that sticks pages from today's newspaper on the wall is your local bookmaker, showing the Racing Post data for the 2:10 race at Newmarket.<p>...but now you too can recreate the charm of your local bookie at home :-)
The unfortunate thing is the display is only 4 bit. At 16 bit I could see using it to display b&w prints. The dpi is a little low but is ok for viewing at distances greater than about 6 feet.
While I love the clarity from of the technology, the ergonomics of reading while standing isn’t great, let alone contortions I used to go they on the Tube to do it.
I am looking forward to having an e-ink monitor that I can write on (in the sense of using a word processor and looking at it through an eink monitor).
Why there's no JS framework good at shaping text into columns and automatically flowing text around images? I understand it's not exactly trivial, but aren't the benefits obvious? It's so much more pleasant to read. Instead, we get designers praising "gorgeous" designs with a single narrow column, big fonts, etc. Why are designers missing the big picture?
jeez, I submitted this 44 days ago and got no traction, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22420685" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22420685</a><p>oh well! It's a cool project!
Such a good project. Reminds me of some of the projects people hacked using our solutions - for example this Digital Picture frame that is displaying the latest tweet from Donald Trump: <a href="https://www.visionect.com/blog/sign-of-the-times/" rel="nofollow">https://www.visionect.com/blog/sign-of-the-times/</a>.
The photo in the article looks cool, showing a full page of the New York Times in tiny dense font on a huge screen. But is anyone really going to want to read a paper in that format by standing next to a wall for an hour while squatting to various heights to allow their head to be level with the text they are reading?
Display is $1500, controller $500, software under NDA and you can't buy it as a mere mortal. It probably takes over a minute to update the display, considering those 3-color waveshare 10" ones take 15 seconds.<p>Honestly, this is crap in every way.