Hacker News Reader

Considering that I see giant >50 inch vertical LCDs screens used as advertisement boards in bus stops and every 100m along street. Same places that previously had rolling advertisement lightboxes swapping between printed ads every couple of minutes. So i would say there are quite a few places where ads are already past the point and the cost analysis isn't E-ink vs printed poster or rollup lightbox, it's E-ink vs >50 inch LCDs.

Browsed aliba and price difference between those rollup lightboxes vs similar size outdoor LCD advertisements wasn't that big ~$200-$400 for lighbox and maybe $400-1000. Wouldn't be surprised if advertisement companies can also ask more money for ads on digital screens compared to printed ones. Payoff period might be shorter than you think. But it would be nice to hear from someone in business who knows more accurate numbers.

As for refresh ugliness in case of advertisements it might be considered a feature even without fancy effects -> blinking attracts attention. And once you unavoidably turn your head to take a look at what's blinking in the corner of your eye the add has already changed. As long as it isn't too frequent maybe once every 3-5 minutes it will probably be considered acceptable. The giant LCDs with annoying videos area already sufficiently big eyesore.

Movement is as much a visual pollution as light is. I find it very, very distracting. That is perhaps a cognitive defect on my part. The fact that e-ink screens will be relatively static is only a good thing in my book.

Another complication might be that e-ink by itself is not visible in the dark, though it isn't a problem to add lights. However, that could again be a benefit.

Personally I would love a ban on ALL advertisement in public spaces, even print. Some brave politicians have done it on a city level, and the citizens just love it. Banning moving images and lights for advertisement would be a compromise, e-ink screens could then still be allowed.

> Movement is as much a visual pollution as light is.

I find more so, especially when it happens in my peripheral vision. It can be irritating enough for me walking past overly animated displays in shops, I bet it could be dangerously distracting for some drivers (who aren't always giving as much attention to the road ahead as they should be anyway) going past street or shop window signs.

> though it isn't a problem to add lights.

Does backlighting eink work? I think all the hand-held displays I've experienced have been lit from the sides. That is probably practical though: the old posters-on-a-roll setups seen in highstreets were often lit that way and with modern bulbs it wouldn't consume as much power these days.

> Banning moving images … e-ink screens could then still be allowed.

I would be wary of that loophole. I've seen some impressive displays of quick refresh rates for e-ink, so playing distracting video content would be perfectly possible assuming those techniques scale to this size, and if advertisers can do it they will whether it is good for anyone else or not.

It's not only you. Movement in general is a preattentive feature, meaning that it gets processed subconsciously and appears to "pop out" in an image.

> I find it very, very distracting.

The human brain has cognitive subsystems devoted to detecting motion that seems non-random, that is, that seems to move with deliberate purpose contrary to other motions like leaves or ripples. It's important for predation on both sides—for the predator or the prey.

That's also exactly why advertisers love it and will continue using it. They will buy any politicians who look likely to ban moving images or lights.

> information that only changes infrequently, but often enough to offset the high cost of the panels vs. just having someone put up a new print

Bus advertising. According to people I worked with back in 2010 that were working on LED panels for buses[0], changing the vinyl advertising on a London bus took something like 3 days. Which is a long time for a bus to be out of service.

An e-ink panel is a great solution - lightweight, zero power use until it needs changing, and the refresh rate doesn't really matter.

[0] Didn't succeed because LED panels at the time were big, low-res, bulky, and extremely power hungry.

> changing the vinyl advertising on a London bus took something like 3 days

That sounds like wrapping a whole bus with an ad. Hardly something an LED or e-ink display could replace.

There's a mix, a quick search took me to https://londonbusadvertising.com/ which shows wraps, which aren't going to be replaced with a display. But also rectangle panels which could be replaced with displays.

Those panels might very well be vinyl for outdoor durability, but I don't see why they'd take 3 days to swap out, unless it's a scheduling/transport issue, for example a bus operator needs to drop off day before, so the ad company doesn't have to schedule around when the drop off happens, and the bus operator picks up the bus the day after, because they don't want to schedule around when the ad company finishes; now your one hour swap is a multi-day production.

A full wrap, could be a 3 day process though.

Not one, but it can be covered in screens. This has been demoed in cars for some time now.

> That sounds like wrapping a whole bus with an ad.

They were talking about the standard landscape side panels. Didn't make much sense to me either but that was why the bus companies were throwing money at them to get LED panels working (aside from the financial bonus of being able to book multiple ads for the same bus, obvs.)

(As an example of how efficient TFL's advertising swapping was - there was a poster at Deptford Bridge DLR advertising a Gorky exhibition in 2010 that wasn't changed until late 2017/early 2018. And all that involved was opening the street-level case to put in a new poster!)

I'd love this to be banned. Not only is it a visual eyesore form the street, it devalues public transport's brand, and in many cases it makes it hard for people inside the vehicle to see where they are.

In copenhagen all the internal screens show ads instead of the next stop.

It's very useful to get lost.

I love our buses in Kraków, Poland. They mostly don't carry any advertising on the outside, but when they do, it's advertising the fact that the bus is fully electric, zero-emissions, and part of the new all-electric fleet. It's low-key, aesthetic, and basically advertising public money being well-spent on improving QoL for citizens.

(I may be wired weird; I'm also happy when I see signs on stuff saying it's been financed by Local Program X, Subprogram Y, with support from EU Program A, Subprogram B, Function C, blahblah. Unfortunately not everyone cares to make those look aesthetically, given that the information is only placed because it's a condition of the grant, but it usually looks OK and IMHO sends a positive message.)

EDIT:

Trams here have been seen carrying exterior ads for private businesses every now and then, less so now than in the past; these days, it's mostly either default coloration or some temporary "this train is new and awesome" ad.

Bus stops, however, are another matter.

As for internal screens, sometimes ads find their way onto the "bus TV" and "tram TV" displays. Most of the time, it's a mix of tourist trivia, air quality report, PSAs (safety warnings, transit etiquette), and transit org's own ads (showing off new eco-friendly fleet, job ads). There's a separate set of screens that show a map (OSM!) and the route with upcoming stop markers, but unfortunately, half the time they're broken - either the map or route indicator is frozen, or they get desynced from each other, or reality. Voice announcements seem to be a separate system and are usually reliable, though every now and then they desync from reality too.

I sometimes wonder who's maintaining this and if they'll take a volunteer (or part-time contractor) to help them keep the indicators working.

> I may be wired weird; I'm also happy when I see signs on stuff saying it's been financed by Local Program X, Subprogram Y, with support from EU Program A, Subprogram B, Function C, blahblah.

Do they also carry the name of the local politician who runs the program? That should raise some eyebrows...

wonder if temperature and durability will be issues on the side of a bus...

> wonder if temperature and durability will be issues on the side of a bus...

They were in 2010 with the panels we had running in New York. I think at any one time, >50% were off the road with issues (dirt, vibration[0], temperature, power supplies, etc.)

[0] e.g. the CF cards holding the OS would eventually just work themselves out of their slots.

> Bus advertising.

If what I see on busses around here (York, UK, and occasionally other cities) is anything to go by, bus-side advertising is dying on its arse. Most of the busses I see are carrying adverts for sales that ended months ago of films “in cinemas now!” that stopped playing on the big screen a year or more ago. If bus-side adverting were in a healthy state I'd have thought new content would have replaced those long ago.

> ..that puts it into a pretty narrow band of application of displaying information that only changes infrequently

On the contrary I would imagine that 99% of information displayed in outdoors is static in nature and does not need something in the range of 24fps.

After all once upon a time 100% of the world's outdoor displays were static, and things were fine. Time Square should not be a benchmark.

full-color refresh is very slow and very ugly

Non-problem in my view. Today's 'ugliness' is tomorrow's nostalgia.

> I think seeing more public spaces shift away from emissive displays and putting more emphasis on quality lighting again would definitely be interesting.

What's the point of running the display on a battery if you need power for the "quality lighting"?