sod all that...
can you hack them? I for one would love one (or twenty) of these things if you can actually use it for something...
Aside from dishing out news about celebrities and TV shows, US magazine Entertainment Weekly has inked plans to add video displays to its pages. From next month, the publication will run a series of editions with Video-in-Print (ViP) LCD screens integrated into its printed pages, a move thought to be a world's first. The ViP …
Microwaving it sounds like an awesome idea. Peace from all adverts in a magazine...
....now I just have to find a magazine interesting enough to read.
It does just appear to be a screen jammed in a book-like cover. The button bit looks like the same-old technique that's been used in childrens' toys for years. Maybe I'm missing something.
Anyway, the video-paper idea has been around for a long time before Harry Potter, at least report with some technical respect and mention Minority Report instead.
Why is it that, in a world where environmentalism is on the up, a company thinks it's a good idea to use throw-away electronics?
Unless the whole issue is electronic (as if we don't already have that) then what exactly is the point? Reusable e-readers/e-books are surely the way forward if people want electronic "news" on the go, not a mishmash like this.
My thoughts as per Robert and Christian.
If this does force the price of LCD down further and gives those of us playing in the field of embedded controllers something better than Nokia 3310 LCD's or hacking keyfob digital picture frames and cheaper than current commercial offerings I'm all for seeing them succeed. Win-win for those who get excited by shiny things and those who want to use or repurpose them, those not interested can just move along, nothing to see here.
Colour LCD's have become ubiquitous over recent years and prices have plummetted as a consequence. This is just another step along the road. Who knows what new ideas and innovations may follow.
Like mentioned, this is a sad attempt from a dying medium to replicate something of the one thats replacing it.
With everyone using the internet, iDevices, and huge-screened mobile phones now, this (expensive?) advert displayer is the very epitome of pointless.
Its as if they don't realise that we're not impressed by seeing video on a small LCD anymore.
So you can just flick past them like every other advert?
It's a clever little gimmick using technology that is still evolving and will one day be everywhere and very very irritating.
Still would be cool for things like maintenance manuals watch a nice video of how to change a part for a car maybe, but for advertising no.
As other people have said, can they be hacked? That would be great I could put a film on it and watch it on the train.
El Reg, still awaiting the "Meh" icon.
this is obviously the lamest thing I have ever heard of.
There was a gentleman on the radio championing his idea - and he genuinely sounded like he believed in his product (no wonder after spending something like 10 years developing it, so he said ... wtf, who pays for this?!)
Not only will it not sell a magazine (except as a moribund collectors item), it is the epitomy of waste.
I can't believe it has come to this.
It would be interesting to see if it could eventually follow a software system where buying a more expensive subscription could give you a magazine without annoying ads?
Of course, one could just wait until the batteries drain at the moment, but in future it could be a real annoyance.
Mind you, I can see a real advantage to this sort of tech if it gets some serious development money. Imagine a guitar mag that can show a quick clip of the writers fingers on the frets or even a tattoo mag that is able to give a full 360 degree video of someones body work!!
Could we one day see cross SCREEN script vulnerabilities where ads can be hijacked?
The school kid could one day be telling his/her parent he/she is studying the book from school, but the video inside has been replaced with something less/more educational. ;)
All this is assuming this thing is programmable/hackable, cheap enough and this actually gets taken up. If it is, in fact, environmentally unfriendly, expensive, non-reusable, etc, then well...
That was my first thought when I saw this on the BBC website. They said it'll have a mini USB connection so you can recharge it, which suggests that you might be able to access the data on the thing in which case they;ll become just like VCR's and tapes were back in the day. A bit of sellotape over the write protect hole to make them writable again and you have a usable bit of media.
"From next month, the publication will run a series of editions with Video-in-Print (ViP) LCD screens integrated into its printed pages, a move thought to be a world's first."
LCD technology? What a waste of two years R&D; AMOLED tech could achieve WAY better results at a much lower price, providing flexible screens, lower power usage and better quality.
OK so 2.7 mm is *quite* thin relative to laptop LCDs.
And the battery has to be quite thin too.
Yes hacking it may give some useful applications.
But will it change the world?
No.
It's a competant implementation of conventional technology manufactured in the conventional way.
With the conventional costs and quality issues.
It is extremely unlikely to be anything other than a very occaisional item.
I guess they figured that full motion video was the most important item and anything that got the job done could be improved.
To those who wonder, why no eInk. Lack of colour and poor speed. Its objectives were always different.
The ideal for this would be paper batteries (as seen in Isralel) backed by printed transistors. Although it seems no one has printed a display tech (organic LEDs?)
However that brings us back to the poor transistor speed (IIRC 100Khz to <5Mhz) requiring some *very* clever architecture to deliver a decent refresh rate.
They'll probably aim to get the company snapped up by some big corporate and split with the loot.
But as a technology success.
Fail.
...likely thoughts had they been discussing the first PCs. "Computers in everyone's house? What a waste! And see how useless they are? 2kbytes of RAM! No display! You can't even DO anything with them without learning a whole new language! This will never catch on. LAMEST IDEA EVER! FAIL FAIL FAIL!"