US magazine to display Harry Potter-style moving images
Entertainment Weekly to get video screens
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 screens have been developed over the past two years by US firm Americhip. Each measures 2.7mm thick and has a 320 x 240 resolution, yet can display around 40 minutes of video footage.
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EW's ViP screens will be about the size of a mobile phone display, online reports have said – so we’re guessing a size somewhere in the region of 1in and 3.5in.
Powered by a battery that can be recharged through a USB connection, each ViP screen is also capable of running continuously for up to 70 minutes.
EW’s 18 September issue will be the title’s first edition published with a Video-in-Print screen inside. The display – in case you were wondering – will run adverts for soft drink Pepsi Max and previews of upcoming TV shows for US network CBS.
The ViP EW editions will only be available to buy in Los Angeles, New York and through subscription. It's not yet known how many copies will be printed or how much they will cost. ®
COMMENTS
Not Cost Effective - Except To Get The Word Out
Americhip's advertising dept must be throwing a lot of money into this campaign, don't expect to see embedded video players in your typical dirt-cheap publications any year soon.
I can just see these commenters'...
...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!"
competant but not impressive.
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.
the start of something great
no negativity here, i think this is the start of full e-ink sheets that download news wirelessly, a la minority report, looks like some superb potential. it doesn't always have be about advertising, try and look beyond that people...
