Digital signage has been one of the fastest-growing segments in the e-paper market. Sharp, Philips, and Samsung have recently entered the fray with their unique offerings, but they primarily rely on E Ink to develop the screen technology. One of the latest developments is D-Posters, which was recently showcased in Japan for the first time. It is due out sometime this year.
E Ink Spectra 6 displays offer six colors: black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow, according to E Ink’s official shop. These colors are achieved using a 4-pigment system. While the display uses these six colors, it can create a broader range of colors through dithering and color combinations.
The E INK D-Poster features a 32-inch Spectra 6 e-paper display that supports A2-sized content. The resolution is 3060 x 2160 with 130 PPI. The total display area is 430x645x22mm, and it weighs 4kg. Bluetooth 5.2 is available and comes with a custom CMS, which can pair with smartphones, tablets, and apps to load in images. Each image takes around 17 seconds to transition from one image to the next. The posters can be outfitted with E INK Ripple, which would help with the flashing on the screen during transitions between photos.
What is E INK Ripple? It introduces wave-like transitions to minimize flicker during page turns. By leveraging the newly developed waveform driving architecture, E Ink enhances color mixing for its E Ink Spectra products by using the existing color particles to create new color options. Large digital signage displays can utilize the E Ink Ripple animation for a more natural and seamless page refresh, creating a softer visual experience and significantly improving page transition quality on ePaper screens.
The Sharp IGZO also powers the D-Posters. IGZO stands for Indium, Gallium, Zinc, and Oxygen and refers to the individual elements that go into the making of the IGZO platform. What is also noteworthy is that Sharp happens to be the first company in the world to have successfully developed the technology for mass-producing display panels.IGZO also allows for clarity that was previously not possible with any existing technology. Combined with the E Ink Spectra 6 display, you have a high-resolution display that has the least glare and is hence extremely eye-friendly. Further, as is already known, E Ink displays have an extremely frugal appetite for battery power. It requires almost no power to retain an image and will only draw some power when the display changes.
The E INK D-Poster will run a stock content management system which will allow people to load in their own images via Bluetooth 5.2. So if you are a company that wants to license this, you can develop a smartphone app to load in images either in front of the poster or remotely. There is also a USB-A port, for memory sticks to manually load in images. It is outfitted with WIFI 6 and has 2 USB-C ports. No word on battery size yet, but it is removable.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.