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Comment by stefanha | Hacker News Reader

I have a hard time getting a sense of what the display is really like from the website and the embedded video (it cuts too quickly, uses depth of field shots of the tablet, etc).

Given that this is all about a new display, it would be nice to show a more pragmatic demo video right upfront. A demo that gives a clear look at how the display behaves with respect to lighting, reflections, animation, touch screen, etc. That's what I would look for when deciding to buy this.

Maybe YouTube reviewers will end up providing this information...

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The lack of any 3rd party hands-on video reviews was the biggest red flag that halted any consideration I had to purchase this product.

they're coming!! but i appreciate your skepticism until there's more video proof, i am the same

too many broken promises by other tech cos, i understand we have to earn your trust

there should be more video reviews coming out on twitter though from early customers / testers

.. if i wasnt drowning in launch, id try to find you a link, if anyone else could help !

I have both rM and rM2. I reverse engineered the rM refresh API and made an open-source framework out of it. This device looks very interesting and I actually wanted to grab one to play with but the next batch ships so far into the future that I decided to wait.

If you could send me a unit (which I'll of course pay for) on a more accelerated schedule, I'd love to explore the device. Let me know.

Publishing a sped-up video without telling us that it's sped up really killed all my trust I had in you guys. Seriously, what were you thinking? Your main and only selling point is the speed. So much so that that needs to compensate for lack of other features like resolution and color. And then you open the door to cheating accusations? You can now 100x say that it's really fast and no ghosting and all that, but your ethics seem to really believe it was no big deal, so at each turn down the line I'll have to question, perhaps here they also didn't think it's a big deal to pull some dirty trick?

So disappointed. :(

For future reference, if you're going to make a claim like this, seriously include a link. It's unclear what video you're talking about.

Assuming you're talking about the link to a video posted by another commenter further down ( https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mikhailt ), that video was posted out of context. There are a lot of other videos on that documentation page which are not sped up. See here: https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382

The video in question, the video under "ereader on steroids", appears to be sped up, my guess is because the purpose of the video is to summarize the functionality. A "3x" label would be nice, but let's not jump to accusations! That video isn't at all in a context where it seems likely meant to mislead. You can view other videos on that page that are in 1x.

Oops I meant to link to here. This is the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40459851

Killed my trust also, "drowning in launch" is no excuse for not rectifying this immediately.

Posting a real-time video right now would take five minutes and clear up all this bad publicity right when they need to.

The page where the videos are from isn't meant to be marketing material. It's a documentation page for people who already have the tablet -- the page says "Welcome to Your Daylight Computer". I personally have no qualms if some of the videos there are sped up, and it has no bearing on my trust of the company.

If you want the promotional videos actually advertising/backing the display claims, check out the main website: https://daylightcomputer.com/product . If you do find evidence that the video there is sped up, I agree with you it's a bad look. But the videos look pretty clearly not sped up based on the human motion.

Regardless there will be third party videos popping on YouTube soon, as the parent comment says.

Many of us seem to have ended up at that documentation page out of exasperation, as we couldn't find video examples on the main page.

It appears that portrait vs landscape on their main page, on mobile at least, conceals that promo video (which does appear to show realtime footage).

If you happen to visit in the wrong orientation (or whatever other variables hide the video) and see claims of speed, but conspicuously absent proof, and then discover quietly sped-up videos buried in the docs, it all starts to feel scammy.

Given e-ink has a history of all kinds of shenanigans, and given I believe this company launched then unlaunched this product a few weeks ago (setting videos to private), it's not surprising some of us are on a hair-trigger.

Anyway, having seen decent enough video now, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. If this is for real, it will be of huge benefit to many who struggle with artificial light sensitivity, and I'm sure they'll do well.

There are other real time videos on this page https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382

I've seen that page - it has 16 videos and it's unclear which are sped up, by how much, and which aren't. Some look sped up to my eye, and even if they aren't, I simply can't trust they aren't because they've shown they won't inform me so.

This is a super bad look for a new product offering whose entire killer feature and market differentiation is based on its supposed blazing speed.

Posting ANY video that's sped up, without clearly labelling by exactly how much, and when (eg, with a "3x speed" text overlay as is almost standard on internet video), is a huge mistake introducing a product differentiating on speed.

It's documentation. Sure, they could add the speed of the videos, but honestly, I want it optimized for showing me how to use the feature, not serving something it's not: marketing material.

Apple does this as well in it's documentation, and no one complains. Lots of companies do this. So, complaining about the documentation being optimized as documentation is silly in my eyes.

What do you do with all the time you save on capitals and punctuation?

To answer this question as someone who often writes messages the same way… typing that way isn’t actually much faster, but it’s often more enjoyable. It also helps to convey a more informal and relaxed tone.

> What do you do with all the time you save

> if i wasnt drowning in launch

Looking forward to the MKBHD review

You can see the videos here: https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-509983

Thank you! This quick overview is helpful: https://player.vimeo.com/video/922512661

It looks like the speed of the video is at 1.25 or something like that. The hand/finger moves kinda un-naturally. Is it just me?

Either way, it looks great. I do watch some YT vids, but I focus on the audio (i.e. watching some urgent news on Sky News (live) - video detail is not as important when something very bad has happened).

It's about 3x. At 19-20s time goes from 5:44 to 5:45, at 40s it goes from 5:45 to 5:46.

That's pretty misleading and borderline deceptive. They should release a real-time video.

There are other videos here: https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382 . That one video appears to have been sped up, my guess is to try to show a "summary" of functionality. I tried a few of the other videos and they don't appear to be sped up.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/921370292

Appears to be the original speed version.

Yeah, for something where the performance is actually a selling point, you should probably feel obliged to include a clock or some other reference in the image. (I'm not claiming anything about this particular video - just that you really want to eliminate the perception of impropriety here.) This was a big problem in robotics for years - it eventually became standard to still do sped up videos but be disciplined about including labels, and robots finally got to plausible speeds at actual tasks - but it didn't take much early-on fakery to get people to assume that most videos were sped up.

(There's a lot of staging and other "creative presentation" that's legitimate marketing - but if you're talking about speed/responsiveness at all, you really need to be explicit.)

I think context matters; that specific video is meant to show a summary of the functionality; it's in a section called "ereader on steroids" and it doesn't say anything about speed. And there are a lot of other videos on the same page which are not sped up. https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382

Labelling the speed would be nice, but I don't detect any bad intentions here.

Wrong link?

This should be the right link

https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382

(points to the section where you can see videos)

https://player.vimeo.com/video/922512661

If you click on "Get to Know the Daylight Computer" section it has some videos.

I've tried it and it's extraordinary. Is it worth it, at this price, to you? That's something only you can answer. But it's unlike anything you've ever seen. I agree that it needs to be seen to be understood and hopefully they can get in retail outlets at some point.

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