Display panel driver having multi-grayscale processing function

Abstract

A display panel drive capable of satisfactory image display with dither patterns suppressed. Display lines of a display panel are each divided into M display line groups including [M·(k−1)+1]th display lines (where M is a natural number, and k is a natural number of n/M or smaller) of the display panel, a display line group including [M·(k−1)+2]th display lines, a display line group including [M·(k−1)+3]th display lines, . . . , a display line group including [M·(k−1)+M]th display lines. Then, to each of the display line groups, each different offset value is assigned for addition to pixel data each corresponding to the display line groups, deriving multi-grayscale pixel data. Then, a lighting mode setting or an extinction mode setting is done based on the multi-grayscale pixel data with respect to each of the pixel cells belonging to the display line groups each different in at least M subfields among subfields constituting a field of a video signal. This enables to prevent dither patterns from occurring by varying the luminance levels to be represented by the pixel cells vertically adjacent to one another in a screen.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.