At Home with John and Debbie

I was trying to read this morning, but as it happened my laptop was angled such that it was clear view, and the Picasa screensaver came on. I couldn’t stop looking at it: it has some pretty pictures and some good memories on it.

This got me to thinking: what would persuade me to cave in and buy one of those digital photo displays? They’re increasingly cheap, but I don’t think they’re quite right yet. What would it take to make something I’d be pleased to hang on the wall at home?

So here’s what I want:

• at least 15 inches diagonal
• 4:3 aspect ratio - since that’s what comes out of most cameras
• look as good as or better than a colour laptop display (I specified this in terms of resolution and colour depth, but replaced it with this more subjective statement)
• viewable from as many angles as a print
• e-ink, because:
  • it should reflect light like a print, not transmit light like a screen
  • it should use little-to-no power when displaying a still picture
• battery operated - one set of batteries should last at least 6 months
• modular enough to mount in the frame of your choice - I don’t mind too much if I have to break a warranty and hack it apart, but I do want that to be possible. It’s even better it it’s designed to be used with arbitrary frames.
• reads from a standard memory card (WiFi would be nice, but it’s not a deal-breaker for me)

This doesn’t seem too much to ask. I’d pay about £80 for something that met all those requirements: more than you’d pay for a LCD photo frame today. E-ink is on the cusp of becoming mainstream. I think full colour e-ink will be expensive for a short while, and then as production ramps up, drop in price dramatically. Fingers crossed!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 11:20 and is filed under Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.