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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

I am a little skeptical of this application of e-ink. Is this really cost effective or environmentally friendly? Compared to an LED or OLED panel, sure, but how does it compare to ye olde poster behind glass? If you're willing to give up on snazzy animations anyway, how many times would you have to change the poster before the color e-ink is cheaper?

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No e-ink product is cost effective.

That's why they have to tout other benefits like being "eco friendly".

Having a connected display gives advertisers a huge amount of control that they desire.

Being able to control the time of day that your ad is shown is a pretty big deal. Being able to edit or take down a poorly considered ad campaign very quickly is also a pretty big deal. Coordinating paper ads and other media is tricky, because the companies that manage the advertising display inventory only have so many workers and therefore only so much capacity to do changes.

Sounds like a real headache. Maybe we should get rid of this whole advertising thing.

Yes. E-ink doesn't need electricity to show an image, it only uses small amounts of electricity to change the image. Technically, if it ran on batteries, you could pop in some batteries, change the advertisement image, and then take the batteries out and the image would stay like that permanently.

Right, but how much does the display itself cost compared to $15 to print a poster out and stick it in a frame?

$15 times the number of posters you want to rotate. Plus the labor to replace them, multiplied by the number that you have.

electricity isn't the only resource to consider, however

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