New Color Libra and Clara now advertised in US

[talaivan]

I have an Elipsa 2E, resolution 227. I find it easier and clearer to read on than the Scribe (which I sold -- disliked almost everything about it), which is 300. I've ordered the Libra Colour and will be interested to see how clear it is for reading ordinary BW text.

[Thargor]

Havent read the full thread but will the Libra Color be able to load .cbr and .cbz comic files do you know or will it have to be colour pdfs for everything?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Thargor

Havent read the full thread but will the Libra Color be able to load .cbr and .cbz comic files do you know or will it have to be colour pdfs for everything?

Taken from the Kobo website:

15 file formats supported natively (EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR)
Kobo Audiobooks

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Thargor

Havent read the full thread but will the Libra Color be able to load .cbr and .cbz comic files do you know or will it have to be colour pdfs for everything?

As mentioned, Kobo can handle CBZ/CBR. But given the size of most CBZ files and the unerpowered nature of most e-ink readers, I wonder how well it will handle them?

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's true that with a pure mono image or text you get a bit better than 150 dpi, but not a real 300 dpi. You can't switch off the printed colour dots.

Someone already posted some very macro pictures of the screen tech on one of these video reviews, and you can see how the magic trick is done.

There is white space surrounding each of the printed colour filtered dots. When displaying image in B&W, the space around the coloured dot, as well as the dot itself, can be white, black, (or shaded in between.

When displaying in colour, the white space has to be blacked out, letting light only through the colour printed area, hense halving the resolution., (and giving it that grainy, pixelated look for those looking very closely). A Very neatly done compromise, and a trick E-ink can do that lcd display can not.

Edit: Here is the video reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qIHCUWAgh4
Clearly, the creator is not a fan of the tech. Conversely, seeing how it works has made me want to get my hands on one all the more!

[JSWolf]

This is how a YT video is posted.

[xyclonei]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Someone already posted some very macro pictures of the screen tech on one of these video reviews, and you can see how the magic trick is done.

There is white space surrounding each of the printed colour filtered dots. When displaying image in B&W, the space around the coloured dot, as well as the dot itself, can be white, black, (or shaded in between.

When displaying in colour, the white space has to be blacked out, letting light only through the colour printed area, hense halving the resolution., (and giving it that grainy, pixelated look for those looking very closely). A Very neatly done compromise, and a trick E-ink can do that lcd display can not.

Edit: Here is the video reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qIHCUWAgh4
Clearly, the creator is not a fan of the tech. Conversely, seeing how it works has made me want to get my hands on one all the more!

Thank you for the video. The macro shot of ACeP/Gallery switching colour was mesmerising.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rashkae

There is white space surrounding each of the printed colour filtered dots. When displaying image in B&W, the space around the coloured dot, as well as the dot itself, can be white, black, (or shaded in between.

When displaying in colour, the white space has to be blacked out, letting light only through the colour printed area, hense halving the resolution., (and giving it that grainy, pixelated look for those looking very closely). A Very neatly done compromise, and a trick E-ink can do that lcd display can not.

It's what I suspected to make the screen pastel and not too dark. But the mono resolution of the actual panel is 300 dpi. The dots are always there, thus it's not as good as 300 dpi without coloured dots.

It's just a printed pattern on a mono panel, so of course you can do the same on LCD, but on LCD there is no need because they can do retangular 1/3rd width pixels for stripes, or smaller pixels, so no-one bothers to quote the mono resolution of the LCD.

Stripes is more common on LCD than the 2 x 2 or more complex CFA because it simplifies R G B addressing to having essentially 3 parallel controllers. With the CFA of 2 x 2 the colours need mapped to a matrix. However no LCD controller I know has a mode to turn off the mapping and allow a twice resolution mono image. No doubt that's what the eink controller is doing. So for mono content you can treat the panel and the controller as if it's the mono eink. But it's not. You can generate text or mono patterns that will favour one or two colours of dots and thus you will get green, red, blue, cyan, yellow or magenta pastel lines or patches on certain fonts, dithered mono images or mono images 1 pixel diagonal structures.

So it could be done on LCD, but pointless, and is only a pseudo 300 dpi mono mode. It absolutely is lower quality than a pure mono 300 dpi screen, so misleading marketing.

Also as well as making the screen more pastel shaded and thus brighter, the alignment of the colour printed layer doesn't need to be as good because the dot is a smaller area than the pixel. This and the limited levels of eink means also darker shades that are not primary colours shift in hue. Your eyes are sensitive to hue shifts.
So Kaleido 3 compare to Triton on the same panel gives a brighter image, with more mono resolution (but not true 300 dpi) at the expense of much worse colour.

Some people will be happy with it, but really 6" and 7" is too small. It needs to be 9" to 13" and even a Kaleido tinted Sage (8") would be far better.

Degrades novel reading and not big enough for colour content. I can't justify buying a Libra Colour.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Some people will be happy with it

That is what justifies their purchase (and sale). Those who are not happy will buy another e-reader.

Incidentally, a PocketBook representative commented on another forum that the return rates for the InkPad Color 3 were similar to those of any other monochrome e-reader, which suggests that people know what they are buying or that the level of satisfaction is adequate. There is now enough information available for anyone to make a decision according to their preferences.

[Croptop]

All of the bickering over colour vs BW and 300 vs 150 DPI aside, I'm still pretty excited that we're down to 7 days before release day. Really looking forward to receiving my Libra Colour.

[talaivan]

Does anyone know whether on the Libra Colour it is possible to mark up pdf's in different colors? On the Sage and Elipsa, you can only mark up pdf's with one pen width, while you can use different widths for notebooks. I am hoping that it will be possible to make different color annotations on pdf's as well as in notebooks.

[Pjama]

On one of the videos I watched, the guy annotated a book in different colors - I assume this would be doable on a PDF therefore. I’m excited to get this, and wish my order status would change from Processed on Kobo.com.

[cerem0ny]

Originally Posted by Croptop

All of the bickering over colour vs BW and 300 vs 150 DPI aside, I'm still pretty excited that we're down to 7 days before release day. Really looking forward to receiving my Libra Colour.

6 days if you’re in Australia!!!

[Dibbler]

I did note that the Libra Colour was on sale, pre-order, at Amazon UK at £199, the same as the pre-order at Kobo UK.
The price remains the same at Kobo but it has increased the pre-order price to £223.98 at Amazon. That is UK pounds.
Not sure if that price change could reflect the typical selling price or not.
The seller on Amazon being Kobo.

[PennyDred]

All this slide towards soldered-in cards has spurred me to get a backup Aura H2O! I can see the usefulness of any quality of colour for textbooks and notetakers. But it's no lure for me until I can get graphic novel quality on a large screen. Till then, I'm happy with the models I have. I might be tempted by a truly modular, repairable option though...