Electronics is dirt cheap these days, Video Mail

[Seekonk]

I got some stockholder info the other day concerning ALCOA.  This one said Video Message Inside.  Thought it was just a damn DVD, but it was a 4 1/4 inch diagonal color screen player. I have been bombarded almost every day with Priority Mail envelopes in this takeover fight. They have certainly spent more money on this than I get in dividends.  Well, at least I get a display screen out of it.

The green sensor on the extreme right detects when the cover is opened.

[xrunner]

 

Yea I guess your right. I wonder what the bulk price was they paid for those?

[CatalinaWOW]

Yep, electronics are cheap. 

This is likely the place they got these - https://www.videoplusprint.com/

The other message here is the size of the prize they are chasing.   I don't know how large a shareholder you have to be to get one of these things, but swag at 10,000 and swag a $100 for the cost.  Both numbers are probably within an order or magnitude or so of the real number, and the errors are likely in opposite directions.  That means a million dollars for this campaign.   The prize they are chasing is many zeros bigger.

[Doc Daneeka]

Cheap and plentiful yes, but my god that seems wasteful - 99% of these'll just end up in the bin.

[boffin]

Same sort of thing in yesterday's mailbag monday. 

[thm_w]

Should either be illegal or whoever makes the thing should be responsible for covering the cost of recycling (separate paper, plastic, pcb, etc.).
Seems not much though: 25c to $1 https://www.recyclemyelectronics.ca/bc/residential/environmental-handling-fee-ehf/

[gnavigator1007]

Just got a whole box of these that were going to be thrown away. All were promotional material for pharmaceutical companies new wonder drugs. So far construction is the same with electronics hot glued between layers of cardboard. Crazy to think how many of these just end up in the landfill.

[Bassman59]

Just got a whole box of these that were going to be thrown away. All were promotional material for pharmaceutical companies new wonder drugs. So far construction is the same with electronics hot glued between layers of cardboard. Crazy to think how many of these just end up in the landfill.

The entire industry of trade-show tchotchkes needs to be shut down. It's all just Chinese plastic crap that is often just left in the conference hotel.

What does it say about a company or an organization that puts its name on such junk?

[amyk]

It looks like you got one of these:
http://linux-sunxi.org/E200

Does it have (unpopulated, possibly) USB? Maybe it could be repurposed... into the PMP that it was meant to be. It even has hardware 1080p H.264 decoding! Something of this complexity would've cost several hundred $ just 10 years ago. It wasn't long ago when desktop PCs struggled with playing of H.264 video.

Edit: I think I see microUSB on bottom right (front view)/top right (back view).

[cdev]

A nice little hackable 1080p display would be useful.

[Simon]

Just got a whole box of these that were going to be thrown away. All were promotional material for pharmaceutical companies new wonder drugs. So far construction is the same with electronics hot glued between layers of cardboard. Crazy to think how many of these just end up in the landfill.

The entire industry of trade-show tchotchkes needs to be shut down. It's all just Chinese plastic crap that is often just left in the conference hotel.

What does it say about a company or an organization that puts its name on such junk?

Fact is joe blogs is a self annihilating twerp and lives in the moment and these people no it. If we had a more intelligent public that would not stand for this crap then we would have better companies. People will soon cry foul when they find out what is in their food, but given the choice what do they buy? yep! the cheapest.

[cdev]

I would buy small displays if they could be used for video with a Raspberry Pi or similar, and were significantly cheaper than the ones for sale now.

There would be a market for them if they could easily be re-purposed.

[Simon]

I would buy small displays if they could be used for video with a Raspberry Pi or similar, and were significantly cheaper than the ones for sale now.

There would be a market for them if they could easily be re-purposed.

It's the usual old problem of practicality of recovery, how do you get them back after they have been spread to the 4 corners of the planet. Doing it on an item by item basis is not practical.

[Wan Huang Luo]

I remember reading ages ago how electronic displays would eventually be integrated into milk cartons with some promising new development or another.

[Simon]

They imagined all sorts of crazy shit. somehow humanity has either too much faith in itself or over compartmentalizes something in order to ignore the side effects. People are also stupid. I once saw a post on facebok about how solar panels cause astronomical polution and are so not worth it. We got into an argument and the only evidence they could come up with was an article a few years ald about the consequences af cheap chinese manufacturers not buying the neccessary reprocessing equipment to reuse the waste insted of just dump it in the field next door and that although in the short term it saved them money it was actually more expensive in the long term. I pointed all of this out to them along with "if that scares you then give up technology entirely because every device you own if not made properly cauises that sort of harm" and never got a peep back.

[Brumby]

I remember reading ages ago how electronic displays would eventually be integrated into milk cartons with some promising new development or another.

The Jetsons had that on the back of a cereal box 50 years ago.  (But it could only tune in to the sponsor's channel.)

[MrMobodies]

I saw an article I think it was in 2010, I can't find it now but it was in Taiwan about a showroom with a shower room inside and it was filled with LCD tiles on the walls.