E-book reader

E-book reader in use

An e-book reader (also known as e-reader ) is a portable reading device for electronically stored book contents ( e-books ). In addition to specialized devices that use electronic paper for display, smartphones , tablet computers and PCs can also be used as e-book readers with the appropriate software .

Play media file

E-book reader (explanatory video)

history

Sony DD8 Data Discman

Sony launched the Data Discman in 1990 (Japan) and 1991 (USA and other countries) . This Electronic Book as designated instrument could Mini - CD-ROMs ( ⌀ read eight centimeters) in so-called EBG standard. The Data Discman needed for the CD caddy which at 3.5 "- floppy remembered and were delivered along with the e-book CDs. The monochrome display could show text with 32 × 10 characters and graphics with 256 × 160 pixels; this representation was also available at a video output. Reference works were mainly published for the Data Discman. Bertelsmann published compatible e-books called BEE-Book .

In 1999, NuvoMedia launched the Rocket eBook e-book reader on the American market, back then with conventional LCD technology. The device was not commercially successful, after which e-book readers disappeared from general attention by 2007.

At the end of 2003, students at the Berlin Institute of Electronic Business first developed the idea of using cell phones as readers. In a pilot project in cooperation with EDS Global Industries , a reader for books made available via WAP was developed and published. A short time later, the first reader for Java- enabled cell phones was made available, and the books were made available for free download in JAR format on a website. The mobile phone library emerged from this initiative, which allows the generation of TXT files in JAR format via a website. These can then be read on any Java-enabled mobile phone.

After a few similarly failed attempts, Sony released the Librié EBR-1000EP reader for 40,000 yen (around 300 euros) on the Japanese market in 2004 . The device achieved the breakthrough as an alternative, at least for paperbacks . The reasons for this included its small size and weight (so light and hardly larger than a standard Japanese paperback) as well as the screen with electronic paper (manufacturer: E-Ink ), the fine display of which is well suited for the complex Japanese writing . It was also advertised with a massive advertising campaign on trains, the main reading place for the Japanese. Scrolling was possible with arrow keys; however, the contrast was significantly lower than with paper writing (black on white). Compared to an open book, the net reading display was relatively small.

In 2006 there were several new releases on the market that were specially designed as e-book readers and based on electronic paper from E-Ink , in particular the iLiad from iRex Technologies, the Sony Reader (successor to Librie ) and from Jinke Electronics the devices Hanlin V2 and V8 . In 2007 the French manufacturer Bookeen delivered the Cybook Gen3 reader .

In November 2007, the US company Amazon launched the Kindle on the US market. One of the key features of the device was its direct connection to the manufacturer's online shop via WiFi or mobile communications. From April 21, 2011, the device was also offered in Germany.

In 2009, other companies launched e-book readers (Sony, Samsung, Barnes and Noble) or announced their own developments for corresponding devices (Vodafone, News Corp, Bridgestone). In 2010 the manufacturer TrekStor brought an e-book reader onto the market.

In the meantime, booksellers based in Germany such as Weltbild or Thalia also sell their own and third-party e-book reader models with a link to the respective online shop.

technology

A large format e-book reader with a screen diagonal of 9.7 inches.

E-book readers usually have a display with a diagonal between 12.7 and 25.4 centimeters (5 to 10 inches), which is usually equipped with a very high-contrast display technology based on electronic paper from manufacturers such as E-Ink or SiPix . In contrast to conventional LCD displays, this does not require active backlighting and thus offers a very legible typeface with high resolution that hardly strains the eyes, remains very legible even in direct sunlight and is reminiscent of the usual typeface on printed paper. Point densities of over 200 ppi have now been achieved, which roughly corresponds to the quality of images in daily newspapers; however, step effects can be further reduced by (mostly 16) gray levels; see also comparison to screens and paper .

Electronic paper contains a clear liquid that contains negatively charged microparticles in black and positively charged microparticles in white. The microparticles can be systematically arranged by applying an electrical voltage once. In this way, no energy is required to maintain the image; in theory, the image once created is retained for weeks. However, since some other components of the e-reader also require - albeit minimal - amounts of electricity, the battery life is usually only theoretically in the range of weeks and months.

The development in display technology leads to colored displays ( Mirasol ) and hybrid displays that can be switched between a conventional and an e-paper mode if necessary.

Accessibility

For people with visual impairment, e-book readers can offer advantages over printed books. Many devices offer a gradual font enlargement and selection of the font, whereby an adequate enlargement can be achieved. The reader should also allow text to be displayed in landscape format so that the text only has to be scrolled in one direction (downwards) when reading under magnification. The frequently used e-ink displays are largely non-reflective and therefore suitable for people who are sensitive to glare. Devices are available that can, among other things, display book formats that are easily accessible and allow full enlargement, for example ePUB , PDF , Mobipocket, HTML or TXT, although not all e-books allow line breaks to be adapted to the enlargement.

Basically, it makes sense to equip it with a reading function, but this sometimes fails due to unresolved questions about the copyright law of books.

criticism

Critics of the e-book readers are of the opinion that device classes that can be used almost exclusively for one purpose will be replaced by multifunction devices such as smartphones or tablet PCs in the future . At present, electronic paper still offers advantages such as a pocketbook-like weight and a reading experience similar to that of printed paper with a very long battery life. On the other hand, displays of this display technology are largely limited to gray levels and react slowly. Since the displays need up to a second to re-create a picture, they are unsuitable for animation . The monochrome display also reduces the attractiveness of these displays for color-bound media such as magazines or advertising, which is why tablet computers are a strong competitor to the classic e-book reader, which sales figures from 2010 hardly substantiate.

E-book readers with a direct connection via cellular network to the Internet or book shops make it possible to easily download the reading material to the device. As a result, however, a subsequent external change of content or an external deletion of documents is also possible in principle. Amazon did this, for example, on July 17, 2009, when Kindle e-books (including Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell ) were deleted from their customers' devices because the publisher did not have the rights to publish them as e-books. After protests, Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener announced that this would no longer happen in the future.

Due to the heterogeneity on the market, no uniform standard file format has yet been established for e-books, which is why incompatibilities between e-books and the reading devices are common. This is increasingly having an impact on the sales opportunities of individual devices. Several devices never appeared on the market despite product announcements.

It is still unclear whether it will be possible to archive book files on a long-term basis and continue to use them on several generations of devices for decades. At Amazon, copy-protected Mobi files in the in-house AZW format are activated for a maximum of six devices with an individual user ID. The device-independent long-term use of these files depends on long-term access to the Amazon customer account and on whether licenses for older e-books can be managed there permanently. Copy-protected files in ePub format can be registered on up to five devices under one Adobe ID. No information is currently available as to whether license management will be possible across several versions of the Adobe Digital Editions . Device-independent long-term use is only possible in principle for files without copy protection (e.g. if watermarks are used instead), provided that later generations of devices support the old file formats.

Market development

According to a study by IDC from March 2011, around 12.8 million e-book readers were sold worldwide in 2010; The clear market leaders with a 48 percent market share in 2010 are the Amazon Kindle models, followed by Pandigital ( Novel eReaders ), Barnes & Noble ( Nook and Nook color ), Hanvon ( WISEreader ) and the Sony readers . This compares to 18 million tablet computers sold. According to a report by the market research company iSuppli ( IHS ), e-book readers are already at their end, as sales figures, in contrast to tablets, have fallen again after a high of 23.2 million in 2011 (14.9 million in 2012).

In the US market, a study by Pew Research , which compared the e-book reader and tablet computer market, showed that the proportion of those who own a reader rose from 6 to 12 between November 2010 and May 2011 Percent of US citizens grew; the proportion of tablet owners, on the other hand, rose more slowly from 5 to 8 percent. About 3 percent of Americans own both a tablet and an e-book reader.

According to the Society for Consumer Research , there were a good five million reading devices in Germany at the beginning of 2012. The market leader is the Kindle, which is available in 1.6 million households. The industry association BITKOM forecasts 832,000 readers sold in Germany for 2013 - after 685,000 in 2012. Originally, 800,000 e-book readers were sold in 2012 and a forecast of 1.43 million e-books sold in 2013 Reader. BITKOM attributes the reduced growth to the increased demand for tablets.

The following parts (forecast) appear since September 2013 is out of date to be : recent figures desirable
Please help with to the missing information research and insert .

Open source solutions

In Brooklyn -based developer Joey Castillo developed in The Open Book Project a multilingual, open source e-reader. The development progress of the open source hardware can be tracked via GitHub .

Trivia

• Stanisław Lem introduced so-called book crystals in his novel Return from the Stars ( Transfer ) as early as 1961 .
• Frank Herbert mentioned a fictional device on which a book is stored in his 1965 science fiction novel Der Wüstenplanet . The device already offered the adjustment to a legible font size and the often typical operation with tapping on one or the other page to scroll.

Web links

Commons : E-book readers  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: e-book reader  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• E-Book Reader - Collection of articles and background reports on Spiegel Online
• Overview: e-book readers and their tests - advice at teltarif.de , as of September 2016
• Silicon beats paper: Why eBooks are (after all) good for the climate read.net, accessed on May 17, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sony Data Discman . The Electronic Labyrinth. Archived from the original on January 9, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 6, 2010. 
2. ^ Sony Data Discman . Home Computer Museum. Retrieved January 6, 2010.
3. ↑ Spiegel.de Article on the Rocket eBook
4. ↑ Cell phone library . QiOO. Retrieved December 3, 2012.
5. ↑ Konichiwa, Librié: Ten years ago Sony launched the first e-ink reader - e-book-news.de. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (German). 
6. ↑ Kindle: Amazon is getting involved in e-books. Reported by heise.de on November 19, 2007.
7. ↑ Golem.de Link to the market launch of the Samsung SNE-50K in Korea
8. ↑ Golem.de Vodafone is planning to develop its own e-book reader
9. ↑ The Guardian News Corp develops e-book readers as carriers for their own media
10. ↑ Handelsblatt Bridgestone brings two e-book readers with color displays onto the market in 2010.
11. ↑ Computerwoche.de How digital paper works
12. ↑ First e-book reader with SiPix display
13. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ Functionality of the Mirasol color displays for e-book readers (web archive) ( Memento from February 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
15. ↑ E-reader with Mirasol display
16. ↑ Youtube.com of the FLEPia
17. ↑ Pixel Qi hybrid displays
18. ↑ Christina Müller (Hrsg.), Stefan Werner Spiegel (Hrsg.): E-Books in Deutschland. The beginning of a new Gutenberg era? (PDF; 517 kB). ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. PWC, Frankfurt am Main, September 2010.  
19. ↑ Morgenmagazin video : eBook dealers can cancel licenses (July 24, 2009)  in the ZDFmediathek , accessed on January 26, 2014. (offline), rights of use declared by Axel Kossel from c't magazine
20. ^ The New York Times: Brad Stone: Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle , July 17, 2009
21. ↑ cnet-news: Amazon says it won't repeat Kindle book recall , July 17, 2009
22. ↑ Achim Barczok: Copy protection: Do all purchase e-books have copy protection and what restrictions apply to e-book readers due to copy protection? FAQ at ct, c't 7/12, July 2012.
23. ↑ Nearly 18 Million Media Tablets Shipped in 2010 with Apple Capturing 83% Share; eReader Shipments Quadrupled to More Than 12 Million ( Memento of the original from November 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. IDC press release dated March 10, 2011.  
24. ↑ Market researcher: e-book reader at the end again | heise online. In: heise.de. Retrieved December 11, 2012 . 
25. ↑ US trend: eBook readers more popular than iPad & Co. ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Reported by chip.de on June 29, 2011.  
26. ^ Kristen Purcell: E-Reader ownership doubles in six months. e-reader ownership surges since last November; Tablet ownership grows more slowly. Market report from Pew Research from June 27, 2011.
27. ↑ Holger Schmidt: The book makes you mobile. In: Focus 12/2012, p. 134, online notification of March 19, 2012.
28. ↑ ^{a b} Bitkom: eBook reader sales are increasing more slowly than expected | BITKOM. In: press release. September 27, 2013, accessed October 7, 2013 . 
29. ↑ Sales of e-book readers are growing more slowly than Bitkom expected. Reported to heise.de on September 25, 2013.
30. ^ Martin Holland: Survey: Every tenth German reads e-books | heise online. In: heise.de. October 9, 2012, accessed December 18, 2012 . 
31. ↑ About Joey Castillo. In: Joey Castillo. Retrieved October 15, 2019 . 
32. ↑ Kim Rixecker: The Open Book is an open source Kindle alternative. In: t3n. yeebase media GmbH, Jan Christe, October 13, 2019, accessed on October 15, 2019 . 
33. ^ The Open Book. In: GitHub. Retrieved October 15, 2019 . 
34. ^ Frank Herbert - Dune of the desert planet, ISBN 3-453-18567-6 - page 68