Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen | Hacker News Reader

Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

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94 pointstechiemonkey81 comments

Meanwhile, today I get an email from Sony saying that their Reader store closed on March 20, and that it has ceded its customers to Kobo, which spawned from Canada's Chapters Indigo. [0]

While this tech may be notable, Sony continues to have a fatally misaligned device/content strategy.

[0] http://www.kobobooks.com/SonyMigrate

What is wrong with just offering a reader without forcing its users to also buy the books from the same source?

I own a Sony reader and I actually enjoy that it is not tightly bundled with a bookstore.

Sure - and I think Sony e-readers were even among the first to allow side-loading of non-DRM ebooks.

The problem is the economics. There just haven't been financially successful examples of standalone readers, and Sony has been no exception.

Amazon can offer cheap Kindles because they can sell ebooks onto the devices directly and make money from content. Apple can charge more for their books because people are bought-in to their iPad investment, and because competitors have to pay Apple 30% to sell directly on to an iOS device.

Sony, meanwhile, continues to fail to bring an integrated value proposition to the market. Everything with them involves friction, compared to the competition. Last time I was at CES, I couldn't even find a Sony reader in their booth.

As I've been reading the coverage of this product throughout the day, the price seems to be the biggest drawback everyone focuses on, and I agree that $1100 is overpriced for what this product is offering. I got the sense from several articles that $1100 would be way overpriced for any e-reader.

Because of the huge number of PDF files in larger paper sizes that I have, I'd happily pay $1500 for this if in addition to it's features it: 1. wasn't made by Sony, 2. was color (to about early 1990s Newspaper quality), 3. was unlocked (different OS could be installed, etc)

It's a premium price that's partly for early adopters to show off, but when you can read and write Japanese on it (as shown in the product video) the deal is basically made. Lawyers will flock to this in droves, not least because it will be a deductible business expense. The color will be irrelevant to them and the Sony brand will actually be an asset, because they're less concerned about Sony's cool factor than the fact they're in no danger of going out of business.

I know, it's not the most hacker-friendly analysis, but this really is something innovative and will help teh technology towards becoming ubiquitous.

> when you can read and write Japanese on it the deal is basically made

Why is this the deal maker? I do not read/write japanese so maybe I am missing something obvious.[^1] Is writing/reading japanese with pen/pencil and paper difficult? Is there something that differentiates Japanese reading/writing from Korean? Have there been other tablets that worked with western scripts but not Japanese?

[^1]: I am assuming we are not talking about handwriting recognition.

Japanese (and Chinese) features intricate ideograms with up to (I think) 22 strokes per character. It's not the language itself, so much as the fact that the display and touch-sensor resolution is good enough to be competitive with paper. Other handwriting platforms I've looked at in the past required writing on a larger-than-natural scale or comparatively slowly (often because of OCR requirements, which are not relevant here, but also because at the time display resolutions were comparatively low). What I saw in the video was natural handwriting speed and good registration with good resolution, which to me passes a threshold of usability that only paper has met up to now.

I have no idea what the GP meant, but fwiw: Korean is written using an alphabet not entirely unlike Latin (for the purpose of this discussion), except that when written, several letters are layed out together in syllabic blocks.

Those blocks appear superficially similar to the characters used to write Chinese languages and much of Japanese. However these are logograms, that is each character represents a whole word (simplfying again - in truth many of these characters can be broken apart into components, but they're not assembled from phonograms like Latin or Korean characters; further, Japanese writing also uses a set of phonograms in addition to and together with the logograms).

Ultimately this means the Korean blocks are much more regular, since they're all composed from the same small repertoire of individual characters, with not even all that much complexity to kerning/ligature-like behavior, though font systems usually work with precomposed blocks instead of doing on the fly character composition anyway. Their shape complexity/stroke density is also lower. And handwriting recognition is massively simpler for all of those reasons.

Downvoted for asking a legitimate question. Who does that? I could care less about the karma but in light of the pending comments change this is very troublesome.

I gave you an extra upvote. I hate it when that happens and thought your question was entirely legitimate - my original comment was a bit vague.

How many downvotes was it?

It is possible it was a fat-fingered upvote.

Is flexibility a particularly useful feature for lawyers? I've always kind of thought that flexibility was one of the shortcomings of paper in most situations involving writing, hence clipboards.

The E-ink screen is flexible. The Sony DPTS1 Digital Paper reader is not flexible: the screen is held in a plastic frame.

Flexibility is a feature. What requires clipboards is a lack of strength. Flexibility is what allows paper to bend and not break when you overcome its strength by flapping it around.

Flexibility ought to allow for lighter devices, as they won't need to be built as strongly to avoid breaking.

What's your particular Sony beef? I've found their products rock solid, on the whole. Rootkit and Sony Network otoh are the negatives I can think of. I'm typing this on the Xperia Z, I've got a S1 tablet, an Prs -101 e-reader, two mp3 players - and I'd recommend every single one.

My video edit suite was all Sony gear (camera, firmware deck, amp & speakers), never a problem - not so with the Sanyo, Panasonic or Philips stuff I've seen.

$1100 is a crazy price for this, then again I'd probably fall for it once in hand.

Careful opinions follow,

Something to do with suing users who use their owned hardware in a way Sony disagrees with.

Suck fony and all that. Honestly since the geohots case I've pretty much laughed and ridiculed sales people in stores who reccomend Sony products. None of them get it and they all think I'm a little bit crazy but sometimes you just have to stand up for what you believe in. Openness and being able to mod or hack my hardware shouldn't come with the chance of being sued. Its absurd and detrimental to society at large that they can get away with it.

Won't be buying. The over pricing I can deal with. Sony. Not so much.

"Break law, face consequences" is a fairly common occurrence across the world.

I was a named party in Sony vs. Bleem!, LLC. I don't support people that sue me or my friends.

I wonder if the $1100 price is for the dev kit and not an actual retail product.

It's not a retail product, it's a professional product. Sony hasn't launched it in the US, it's being imported by Worldox, which is targeting lawyers etc. http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox

I wonder if people would be better informed if there were more professional journalists and not as many crappy blogs...

This tech, and that business plan, is nothing new. Plastic Logic aimed squarely at the professional market with a flexible e-ink reader that debuted at CES 2009. [0]

It hasn't worked out so well for them. I visited their booth in 2009, and they showed a large flexible screen housed in a rigid case. It was to be the advent of flexible e-ink, and the beginning of a new era. Eventually, their announced content partners fell through, and despite an initial splash it never really materialized.

Plastic Logic did launch in the US, but shut down their US ops in 2012. [1] They are still a going concern, however, and still focusing on the business market.

[0] http://www.slashgear.com/plastic-logic-que-wireless-ebook-re... [1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1a08be60-9eba-11e1-9cc8-00144...

Yes, thanks, I know. I knew (had met with) Plastic Logic in the UK several years before I went to the Que launch at CES in 2010. It came out of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.

The Sony screen is made by LG. It's a much bigger operation.

Very good - then don't you also share my skepticism about this as a viable product?

The first meetings I had about Que was actually with Hearst, if I recall. The Plastic Logic play was backed by content providers seeking a new channel, including Barnes & Noble. The Sony play is backed by a hardware provider seeking a new channel. So producers have this need, but what about customers?

I find myself having the same three doubts I had back in the day:

1) Nobody cares if a screen is flexible for these particular product applications (especially for the Que, which mounted flexible display tech in a rigid form).

2) It's a solution in search of a problem. Who is clamoring for this device at market scale? Even for a specific vertical?

3) Haven't we learned that these devices need the support of a broader ecosystem? That developers need to find opportunity in a platform for it to succeed, and that requires a certain critical mass? How is that going to happen serving a niche vertical market?

Interested in your thoughts.

The Que was aiming at a much wider market, and when the iPad was announced, they folded.

Sony is aiming at a much smaller professional market, and it has a chance where people don't use Latin alphabets, including Japan. I don't know enough about the US legal scene to know whether it will find a market there, but Worldox thinks it's worth a go....

baschcoder, or scholia, do you guys know of a blog that follows the professional market?

Well, I think the crux of my criticism is that I'm not sure there actually is a real professional market for e-ink devices.

Why don't you want it from Sony?

tl;dr DRM, Sony Rootkit debacle, Vegas Video (and the other audio ap that they purchased from Sonic Forge) activation scheme. Trust.

1. The CD they produced with a rootkit that I had write a script to facilitate it's removal from several hundred PCs on a network with unique government contractual security requirements.

2. My Sony 1080p HD TV that I have to unplug the HDMI cable any time I want to watch streaming video on my Sony Blu-Ray player.

3. Vegas Video, which was far too expensive of a piece of software to (A) treat me like a criminal for having made the mistake of actually paying for it and (B) spending two weeks pleading my case after I upgraded my PC for the third time and the software insisted that I pay for it again.

As a rule, I avoid products who's DRM schemes I am forced to use. You can't always avoid it, but my PDF collection is unencrypted and, though I assume that Sony isn't going to suddenly add DRM to those files, I can only go by their history and the fact that there's not really any evidence that they've learned their lesson, only that they got caught and like most companies, prefer to avoid the negative press. Even Microsoft has toned down the implementation of their activation schemes. Remember when a PC would deactivate resulting in a 3 hour usage limit and the disabling of Aero? I have a PC that hasn't been able to talk to the licensing server for a year and all I see is a subtle Genuine Windows message in the lower right hand corner, a nag when I start Office and a message in the title bar. It's a little annoying since these are legal enterprise licenses on a tablet that I just haven't used VPN on in a very long time, but the software still works properly.

This kind of product requires me to grant Sony a certain amount of trust. Sony flushed trust down the toilet with Vegas Video and two Sony products failing to negotiate a proper HDCP handshake without physically unplugging cables. That would have been enough, but I don't even have a metaphor to describe what they did when they chose to take a medium with no DRM scheme and hack a user's PC into inserting one much like ransomware does with people's word docs.

I'd have no room to complain if I plugged that device in and it b0rked my PDF collection because based on history, what else should I expect?

*EDIT: Grammar

Not really, I've played with one an the enclosure is pretty rigid. It flexes but it's not like you can fold it and half and then smooth it out. I'm still waiting on that. Also the resolution leaves something to be desired at that size.

Would the best analogy be something like a 5.25" floppy, where it wiggles a bit but bending it into a U-shape would wreck it?

This is much thicker than that. No, if I remember correctly it's really more like a large, thin hardback, like a children's book. Sorry I can't be more specific, I only held it for a few moments, and they could easily have altered the design or simply had an old prototype out.

I suspect they meant flexible in the usability sense rather than in the physical sense :/

Having busted e readers before; being able to flex a little probably does wonders for it's survivability. Light weight + thin + rigid is just a dangerous combo.

This technology is really cool, too bad it seems like there wasn't much thought put into making an appealing product out of it. Just imagine how much more you could do with a flexible display, rather than just reading PDFs and writing notes. From the video, the UI looks mediocre, and this is just a guess, but I wouldn't expect the software to be great. It feels like Sony just wrapped up a really cool hardware prototype in a shell and decided to sell it, but the whole thing lacks any sort of polish. I can't wait for someone who cares about the details of a product to get a hold of flexible e-ink screens.

Attach it to a keyboard. Screen is big enough to code at the beach.

Isn't what I wanted Mirasol to be, but looks like a damn fine refinement of e-ink.

I really, really want a beach laptop. The ultimate accessory for Silicon Beach. I've looked into rigging up my own with leftover Pixel Qi demo screens and older netbooks but I haven't had the time. Someone please liberate us from coding indoors!

sand in the keyboard though...

Hook up one of those new projected keyboards, and I think it'll be ready.

Silicone keyboard covers.

I don't understand why a flexible e-ink screen is desirable if its cost doesn't approach that of paper – and it's safe to say it won't for a very long time. If it's (relatively) expensive, you want to reuse it, and so it will need a rigid enclosure. Apart from bending around shallow radiuses for gently curved displays and the like, am I having a failure of imagination?

Imagine you already deal with a great amount of paper by necessity. You can put it in a binder, bend it out of the way to get at physical documents behind it, use it as a live index to other things and so on. It would be perfect for lawyers in court, where you don't necessarily wish to have a laptop on the table r a device that you hold up, but you do have to deal with massive amounts of paper and would like an electronic tool that substituted/integrated as seamlessly as possible into that environment.

This is just an initial release/prototype. Pretty sure it will improve with time. Glad to see Sony breaking new ground and also glad that e-ink technology is improving.

No, it's being offered for sale....

So is the Rift

The Rift devkit.

It does not matter how much it costs now. Simple facts that it is possible and technology to produce it exists are important. Within a few years economy of scale and technology optimizations will bring flexible e-ink at affordable price.

This, technology always starts out expensive and impractical. Through mass production and refinement, it becomes practical and useful. Now that it's confirmed possible and somewhat practical, more funding and research is likely to be directed toward it.

It's funny, almost every argument against this e-reader I've read here today I also read when sony released it's first e-reader, well in advance of the kindle. I bought it anyway and had no regrets.

Still in major need of a refresh rate boost. Especially with stylus input. It would be near-impossible to write at a reasonable speed when the screen takes so long to refresh.

I was pretty upset with it's performance as a writing pad, having 100ms response times, maybe even higher. Even if I didn't have 3 week battery, I'd prefer <35ms draw times so it feels 1-to-1 with the input.

1200×1600 greyscale and 13.3" is great, but I feel that 'flexible' is a lower priority than 'not $1100'.

that is only if you haven't broken a few e-ink screens already :)

As soon as I saw this I thought "no way anyone sensible is buying this, it will break in a week".

Factoring this in, a rigid screen would have probably meant "unsellable".

Use a case? Include a free fake leather case with every purchase?

I've had zero problems with my Kindle screens, but I've never dropped them.

This looks awesome. I love the ability to write on e-ink. But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper? What is the benefit of a non-rigid e-ink display for these types of use cases?

> But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper?

This is interesting. I hadn't thought of it from this perspective. If perhaps, down the line of course, you could roll it up like a taquito then you could put it in your pocket.

I actually want/need a digital sketchpad, and while I do read/annotate PDFs, this is not what I would do the majority of the time.

If this device would be hackable (run linux on it), I would find so many use cases for it that I could justify the price in a heartbeat.

Somehow, being a device from Sony, I expect this reader to be a piece of junk software-wise, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised that you need to convert the PDF into something else and use custom clients just to exchange files.

I hope I will be wrong.

If you want a cheap digital sketchpad, look at the Boogie Board LCD slates. They're nowhere near as good as a proper graphics tablet, but you can draw and save stuff on them. High end model is around $100, other models more like $30.

I really want an e-ink screen, otherwise paper is still a better option for me. Price is not really an issue if the screen delivers.

This might be very useful for reading academic papers, because most of the time people scribble notes while reading.

It's funny how having solved the battery problem (3 weeks on one charge), they still can't solve the speed problem (1 sec to refresh the page).

Wow, that's cool as hell. Even though it's $1100, it's new technology, and subsequent iterations will likely be much cheaper (and will probably have support for color).

Is there a source for this that isn't blogspam?

http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox and http://www.sony.com/digitalpaper

wait, this device is literally flexible as in bendable like paper? that's what the article makes it sound like, but it doesn't seem to be true based on the product page:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-digitalpaper/cat-digitalpap...

I think that it's the display that's flexible, not the device. I suppose that you could potentially do a Chromecast style computer in a kind of bump enclosure at the bottom of the back of the display to retain flexibility (though I don't think that there's enough detail to determine if there are other issues with such an approach). They however seem to be using a traditional rigid enclosure for the prototype.

At $8.95 apiece, $1100 can buy you 122 mass-market paperbacks. I certainly hope that someone can bring that retail price down a fair chunk, or this tech is not going far.

This is not meant for reading paperbacks. A kindle paperwhite, at $120, is a far better choice for that.

This is for reading and annotating documents, and generally replacing paper in an office or academic setting. Given then number of research papers I've printed out (thousands and thousands of pages), I can see a huge use for this. It may still not be cost effective, but is still much more environmentally friendly and saves the hassle of keeping track of all of that paper.

The paperless office has been an idea for several decades, but without devices like this that allow easy reading and annotation, we haven't been able to get there.

For research papers... maybe 50 pages including technical graphics? With a monochrome laser printer, we'll give a very high estimate of $0.10 per page, or $5 per paper. That's still 220 papers to break even, at least, and only one person can use it at a time, unlike the printer, which can be shared for the whole office.

My home printer is over 10 years old, and I still don't think I have spent more than $800 on it during that time, including consumables.

And I would recommend the Kobo Glo/Aura over the Paperwhite for paperbacks. The MicroSD card slot alone is worth it.

> For research papers... maybe 50 pages including technical graphics? With a monochrome laser printer, we'll give a very high estimate of $0.10 per page, or $5 per paper. That's still 220 papers to break even

Okay, so, yes, its cheaper to print paper than to carry a letter-sized, write-on-it, ereader.

OTOH, its a lot more convenient to carry one ereader if you have a lot of stuff to view than it is to carry a stack of books/research papers/etc.

Fine, but you're leaving out the cost of the printer, too. And the shelves to put all the papers on, and the cost to dispose of (or recycle) them when you're done with them.

YES!

This replaces your legal/letter notepad your drag meeting to meeting, not your Kindle.

If the pad and display was good enough to keep up with handwriting, I would be all over this at work.

I've worked with Laptop or iPad/Keyboard and I can make it work, but nothing beats a pen and folio.

Microsoft Surface Pro

Apparently Sony's going to a legal-technology trade show to pitch this to wealthy legal firms.

No need to be a wealthy law firm. $1100 for an obviously deductible business expense isn't much, about the same as a quality laptop (and far less than what people used to pay for a quality laptop). You'll see people using these on CSI or some other legal-themed network TV show before the end of the year, possibly even the end of this season. If I was a TV show producer I'd be on the phone to Sony right now begging for two of them - one for the TV lawyers to use on screen, and one for me to mark up scripts on.

> If I was a TV show producer I'd be on the phone to Sony right now begging for two of them - one for the TV lawyers to use on screen, and one for me to mark up scripts on.

Bones. I expect to see this on Bones shortly.

Many new technologies are prohibitively expensive, but we have to start somewhere.

Can we really call this new technology? I get it that it's a new iteration of eInk technology, but it doesn't seem that Sony is really taking advantage of any of the advances with this implementation. As much as I really want to get excited about this, I just don't see anything here that really does it for me.

As much as I think Amazon needs some competition, I'd love to see them take a swing at this concept with a Kindle - "Technical Edition". While I'd love to see some openness and extensibility via an SDK, I think if you get the price point right, it doesn't much matter. A sub $300 A4 or Letter sized device with the ability to read major document formats, annotate notes and maybe offer a digital note taking solution would be a dream.

But, at $1,100 this is nothing but a interesting but wholly irrelevant spectacle from a company that is rapidly trending in the same direction.

I'm in the market. At one point I tried a Logitech Io2, even though I knew it was too awkward to really work.

At this price point lifetime is what I'm looking for; a moleskine replacement that could last 6-10 years would be interesting to me, even if it isn't perfect (refresh rates, and so on). Of course data accessibility is a concern with Sony too.

You can get an e-reader for around $40 these days. This is a one of a kind specialty product.

> You can get an e-reader for around $40 these days.

Yeah, but you can't get a letter-sized eink reader for around $40.

How exactly is this a MVP?

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