Common Paradox Tech Blog

waderoush writes “E Ink, which makes the monochrome electrophoretic screens used in the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader line, and other e-readers, is gearing up to supply manufacturers with the first color versions of its displays by early next year, according to an Xconomy interview with T.H. Peng, a vice president with Taiwan’s Prime View International, which bought E Ink last year. Peng argues that E Ink has nothing to fear from the e-book apps on the Apple iPad and other devices with color LCDs, which, in his view, produce more eye strain and aren’t as suitable for digital reading. Nonetheless, the company says its first color screens in 2011 will have newspaper-quality color, followed within a couple of years by improved versions that can handle magazine-style content.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jones_supa writes “Pixel Qi has just revealed their DIY kit for netbooks, planned to be out ‘near the end of Q2 — sounds like June. This makes it possible to retrofit a screen to one fully readable in direct sunlight. In her blog, Mary Lou Jepsen says: ‘It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb: it’s basically 6 screws, pulling off a bezel, unconnecting the old screen and plugging this one in. That’s it. It’s a 5 minute operation.’ She also talks about the ‘laptop hospital,’ a service depot started by kids in Africa.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Were you as impressed with the Pixel Qi display as we were? Good news: There’s a DIY kit coming late this year that will allow you to swap out 10-in. laptop screens with a transforming Pixel Qi transflective combo screen.

Better news: The folks at Pixel Qi content that switching out the old display with a shiny new one is only “slightly more difficult that changing a lightbulb.” Naturally, you’ll be voiding whatever semblance of a warranty you may have had on your present laptop by doing this, but for many the sunlight-friendly transflective e-ink-like/LCD combo displays Pixel Qi provides might make it worth the headache should things go awry down the road. We just hope you can un0install the screen just as easily as it goes on however, should our concerns about this tech being “one or two generations” from true usability pan out when the kit launches later this year.

newVideoPlayer( {“type”:”video”,”player”:”http:\/\/bg-video.cp.motionbox.com\/motionboxons\/flash\/VideoPlayer.swf?type=sd&video_uid=7a97d5b31212eccbf5&security_token=prod3.7fffffb27de9a8b4″,”customParams”:{“allowScriptAccess”:”always”},”width”:500,”height”:319.65,”ratio”:0.6393,”flashData”:”",”embedName”:”mbox_player_7a97d5b31212eccbf5″,”objectId”:”mbox_player_7a97d5b31212eccbf5″,”noEmbed”:false,”source”:”motionbox”} );

Watch for the kit in Q2. No pricing info given , but if you find it updated somewhere be sure to get your citizen journalism on and let us know. [Pixel Qi via Engadget]

Barence writes “ATI has carted its monstrous six-monitor Eyefinity gaming system to the offices of PC Pro for an extensive hands-on session. The game was Race Driver: GRID, the resolution was a mighty 5,760 x 2,160, and the overall effect was… a bit hit and miss. There’s no denying it has potential, and the level of immersion sounds impressive, but this report complains of problems with bezel correction that currently tarnish the overall effect.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MojoKid writes “Sony recently announced it would halt sales of its 11″ OLED TV in Japan, where the panel first debuted. For now, the XEL-1 will remain on sale in the US and other markets, but Sony’s decision to kill the unit in its home market and reduce the rate at which it’s investing in future OLED TV development has been perceived in some corners as a judgment on the long-term feasibility of OLED technology. In the wake of Sony’s announcement, far too many pundits have rushed to declare OLED panels dead, dying, moribund, or otherwise abandoned. However, it seems more likely at this juncture that we’ll see development focus shift from large panel sizes to smaller ones, particularly since the smartphone/handheld OLED market is growing briskly and larger screens are inherently more prone to defects. Sadly, this means that your chance of traipsing home with a truly cutting-edge display before 2014 or so could be pretty minimal.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For home theater buffs who want (or already have) a high-def system using component-video connections, time may be growing short. Audiofan writes with this story, which begins: “Digital HD (high definition), like that enabled through HDMI and Blu-ray, is awesome. It offers amazing picture and audio quality. It allows you to conveniently connect one single cable to provide both picture and sound. It is royally going to screw up a lot of homes next year. Wait, what was that last part? After December 31, 2010, manufacturers will not be ‘allowed’ [to] introduce new hardware with component video outputs supplying more than an SD resolution (480i or 576i). Should this go through as planned, it’s going to disable or throw a wrench in a lot of existing custom installations as soon as the end of this year.” The AACS in the headline stands for Advanced Access Content System, the industry scheme to block “the analog hole” by controlling content from storage media to eyeballs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

@engadget mentions that a new project dubbed “Flyfire” at MIT is looking to launch a fleet of LED-equipped micro-helicopters and coordinate them in synchrony to create massive floating images. “By using LED-equipped drones the project pledges to build free-floating 3D displays, endowing them with enough smarts and positional awareness to organize themselves into an airborne canvas. It sounds deliciously exciting and challenging.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

adeelarshad82 writes “At the MWC, TI showed off a tablet-sized device with a 3D display that doesn’t require glasses, running on an existing TI OMAP3 chipset. The 3D demo showed images and video in 3D by using a standard 120-Hz LCD with a special overlay film from 3M that can direct images either towards your left or right eye. By flickering two images very quickly, running at 60 frames per second rather than the usual 30, the display transmits a different picture to each eye, creating a simulated 3D image. The 3D picture can be created using a handheld with dual 3-megapixel cameras and an 800-MHz TI OMAP 3630 chipset.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

adeelarshad82 writes “At the MWC, TI showed off a tablet-sized device with a 3D display that doesn’t require glasses, running on an existing TI OMAP3 chipset. The 3D demo showed images and video in 3D by using a standard 120-Hz LCD with a special overlay film from 3M that can direct images either towards your left or right eye. By flickering two images very quickly, running at 60 frames per second rather than the usual 30, the display transmits a different picture to each eye, creating a simulated 3D image. The 3D picture can be created using a handheld with dual 3-megapixel cameras and an 800-MHz TI OMAP 3630 chipset.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OLED displays are widely accepted to provide some of the best image quality money can buy. The problem is that it does take a lot of money to buy them. The current generation of manufacturing tech means that small OLEDs, like the one found on the Nexus One, are really at the upper limit of cost effectiveness. A start up called Kateeva wants to change that. They are developing a system for printing OLED displays.

Kateeva’s manufacturing process has been shown to be capable of printing 1.8 by 1.5 meter OLED displays. They estimate the costs to be roughly 60% of current methods. Don’t get too excited yet. The OLED printer is set to be tested by display manufacturers next year. Just imagine, in a few short years you may be tossing out your tired old plasma or LCD HDTV and buying an OLED version.