Yeah this is why a lot of battery-powered electronic shelf labels use LCD. E-Ink's product is great but they're impossible to actually build into a working product line because their terms are so odious.
I could buy the part on the grey market from China, but the documentation was literally non-existent (as in, there was zero, none. At least from the seller I wanted it from).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_200LX
Does anyone have any suggestions for a screen that would fit this sort of use-case? The UI/UX I planned on being a straight Linux TTY1 to begin with.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694
It's a "memory LCD", which has very low no power drain when idle, but has an LCD's refresh speed (i.e., fast enough to display video).
You can also get some decently-documented eInk boards from Waveshare in 1" to 13" sizes, though the costs are definitely too high for anything but one-off Maker projects:
https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper.htm
You may also find the PaperTTY project interesting for your TUI: