Bridgestone, yes the tire company, in cahoots with Vivitek have been ironing out color e-ink technology for the last few years. At CES in vegas this year we got a chance to sit down with the CEO of Vivitek and go over some of his technology.
One of the units that caught our eye at CES was the 21 inch color e-reader. It featured resolution of 2,560 x 1,920 pixels for the mono panel and 1,280 x 960 for full colors. It also has 4 GB of internal memory with MicroSD support up to 32 GB of memory. For internet connectivity it has 3G/2G options along with built in wireless internet access.
Working off of some new technology that took facets from QRLBD or Quick Response Liquid Powder Display. It’s basically a screen and logic controller system for electronic readers that promote a low power consumption while displaying 4096 colors. One of the big new factors in this technology is the .08 seconds page update and support of different types of page refreshes. It can do partial page updates, full page updates, and supports touch screen and Stylus interactions. The screen technology can support 8 inch all the way to 21 inches and does around 4 levels of gray-scale. Like Pixel Qi the big selling points to clients wanting to employ QR-LPD is the ability to read it in direct sunlight.
Bridgestone and Vivitek are again refining the technology into A4 and A3 paper-sized AeroBee terminals. As with all of these big units, most of them are built to suit specific clients and I would not hold my breath to see a mass produced version for students. When we chatted with the CEO in January he basically said they built prototypes to woo real estate firms, hospitals, and various other businesses to invest in new technology. Check the Video below for an overview of the new e-readers.
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.
