This invention presents ways of operating high deflection angle vertical scan tubes which are subjected to magnetic fields which degrade the color uniformity of images.
An ambient magnetic field in a vicinity of a cathode ray tube (CRT) can affect the color rendition of an image projected on a viewing faceplate of the CRT. The ambient magnetic field is mainly caused by the earth's magnetic field and can be affected by local magnetic fields and magnetic materials in the area. The ambient magnetic field being unidirectional, can be vectorially decomposed into a vertical and a horizontal part, and these components depend on the given geographical location of concern. The effect of the North/South and East/West components of an ambient magnetic field on the electron beams in a CRT with respect to the given CRT coordinate system completely depends on the orientation of the CRT. In a given latitude, the effect of the vertical component on the path of the electron beams of the CRT is relatively constant and will vary as the geographic latitude of the CRT changes. The effect of the horizontal components (which can be North/South and/or East/West oriented with respect to the CRT) on the path of the electron beams of the CRT changes as a function of the orientation of the CRT.
In a conventional CRT that has inline electron guns aligned in a horizontal plane and vertically oriented phosphor stripes, the vertical component of the ambient magnetic field deflects the electron beams horizontally, which affects the register of each of the electron beams on the desired phosphor stripe. The North/South components of the ambient magnetic field causes lateral deflection of the electron beam at the top and bottom of the screen. The East/West component of the ambient magnetic field combined with the internal magnetic shields causes lateral deflection of the electron beam in the corners. Since the vertical component is relatively constant and not affected by the orientation (in a horizontal plane) of the CRT, the CRT can be set to minimize vertical field misregister. Both North/South and East/West orientations of the CRT cause register effects as the CRT is varied in the horizontal plane direction; as such, magnetic shielding could be designed to balance the effect of North/South and East/West orientation and keep the overall effects of the earth's magnetic field to within the tolerance of the system. Such magnetic shielding systems are well known in the art.
Recently, the demand for large aspect ratio CRTs has led to the development of CRTs having inline electron guns aligned in a vertical plane and horizontally oriented phosphor stripes. In these CRTs, the vertical component of the ambient magnetic field combined with the internal magnetic shield causes the electron beams to deflect horizontally along the phosphor lines, which does not significantly affect the register of each of the electron beams on the desired phosphor stripe, especially for high deflection angles in the corners, except for some vertical component in the corners. The horizontal component of the ambient magnetic field causes the electron beams to deflect vertically, which affects the register of each of the electron beams on the desired phosphor stripes. Because the effect of the horizontal component on the path of the electron beams changes dramatically as the orientation of the CRT in the East to West direction is varied, it is significantly more difficult to design adequately balanced shielding for all North, South, East, and West orientations. Additionally, the relationship between the orientation of the CRT and the horizontal component is entirely under the control of the consumer, who will orient the CRT based on personal preference. Further, as the deflection angle of CRTs has increased from 100° through 125° and now to 140°, these tubes have become more sensitive to the detrimental effects of magnetic fields. One source for this increased magnetic sensitivity is the fact that with the increasing deflection angle, there is a direct and corresponding loss in the space available to design an effective internal magnetic shield. Available IMS space inside the glass bulb for a W76 CRT has been reduced from a height (i.e., in Z-axis) of 6.2 in. in a 106° tube to a mere 1.2 in. in a 140° tube.
It is therefore desirable to develop a compensation system that reduces the effect of ambient magnetic fields in CRTs having reduced depth and particularly those CRTs having inline electron guns aligned in a vertical plane and horizontally oriented phosphor stripes.
A CRT display device comprises a CRT having a panel connected to a funnel. An electron gun assembly positioned in a neck at a narrow end of the funnel is provided for directing electron beams toward a screen on the panel. The display includes a yoke to scan the electron beams across the screen, a degauss coil positioned on the funnel for degaussing the display device, and a DC canceller coil for counteracting electron beam displacement caused by North/South magnetic fields. The display can further include a means to dynamically correct electron beam landing errors on the screen, additional coils positioned near the wide end of the funnel to further assist in reducing electron beam landing errors, and a magnetic field sensor system capable of sensing the ambient magnetic fields and generating signal to appropriate drivers to correct for electron beam landing errors caused by the ambient magnetic field.
This invention allows high deflection angle CRTs to operate with good performance in a wide variety of magnetic fields.
The CRT 1 is designed to be used with an external magnetic deflection system having a yoke 14 shown in the neighborhood of the funnel-to-neck junction. When activated, the yoke 14 subjects the three beams to magnetic fields which cause the beams to scan vertically and horizontally in a rectangular raster over the screen 12.
One feature of the invention is the application of one purity correction means which optionally involves a magnetic field sensor 17 positioned near the CRT 1. Although the magnetic field sensor 17 is shown in the embodiment of
The output signal of the magnetic field sensor 17 is fed into a controller as shown in
The yoke 14 and yoke effects will now be described in greater detail with applicability to the system with vertically oriented electron guns. The yoke 14 is positioned in the neighborhood of the funnel-to-neck junction as shown in
Correction of misconvergence that resulted from both the register correction and the yoke effects described above is achieved by addition of quadrupole coils 16 schematically shown in
Color purity correction is accomplished by dynamically adjusting register correction coils 16a preferably mounted in the neck region. The register correction coils 16a apply a relatively uniform field across the three beams such that the three beams are uniformly deflected in the direction of the plane of the beams. This deflection moves each beam register normal to the phosphor stripes so that it can be centered on the respective phosphor stripe. Such coils could be integrated with the quadrupole coils 16 or, alternatively, integrated with the yoke 14 and yet again alternatively, located independently on the neck in the general region between the quadrupole coils 16 and yoke 14. Neck mounted register correction coils 16a cause beam displacements in addition to beam angle changes. The combination of these changes to the beam paths result in simultaneous register and convergence changes as these coils are activated. Therefore, dynamic programming of the quadrupole coils 16 in appropriate synchronization with the register correcting coils 16a is required in order to simultaneously maintain purity and convergence.
As shown in
A facet of this invention includes the use video correction in conjunction with purity correction. Video correction can be incorporated into the various other embodiments of the invention in order to assist in obtaining proper raster geometry when ambient magnet conditions would either distort raster geometry. In video correction, digital video signal information is mapped to the appropriate scan location to correct convergence and geometry. This video mapping does not affect the spot shape and is an effective tool for small corrections. Video correction to improve convergence is attractive because it may obviate the need for multipole correction, for example, by quadrupole coils and can also correct residual raster geometry errors. (Raster geometry errors can includes deviations from a desired raster shape.) The elimination of the quadrupole coils is particularly beneficial, because it reduces the cost of the novel CRT. Although the controller can be configured by design to drive the coils and/or the video correction system simultaneously, as shown in one embodiment of the invention, including the use of both the quadrupole coils and digital video correction to improve convergence, it should be understood that the controller may be configured to drive only the video correction system, thus eliminating the need for quadrupole coil correction as described above. However, video correction can still work in conjunction with quadupole coils.
In general, CRT displays exhibit raster distortions. The most common raster distortions pertain to geometric errors and to convergence errors. Both geometric and convergence errors are position errors in the scanned positions of the beams as the raster is drawn on the screen. Convergence errors occur when, in a CRT display, the Red, Green and Blue rasters are imperfectly aligned such that, for example, over some portion of the image the Red sub-image is displaced left with respect to the Green sub-image and the Blue sub-image is displaced to the right of the Green sub-image. Convergence errors of this type can occur in any direction and anywhere in the displayed image. Geometry errors occur when the actual beam locations during the scan deviate from their intended locations and can be detected when one applies an input signal corresponding to a grid designed to have a uniform field of squares is displayed as having non-uniform field of squares. Also, with any practical embodiment of the known color CRT, both convergence and geometric errors become readily visible even if the center region is perfectly aligned during the original manufacture of the CRT, assuming that the deflection signals applied to the deflection coils are linear ramps. Utilizing traditional, well known in the art, analog circuit techniques to compensate for such distortions, the deflection signals can be modified from linear ramps to more complex wave shapes. Also, the details of the yoke design can be adjusted such that convergence errors and geometry errors are reduced. As the deflection angle is increased beyond 110°, such traditional methods of geometry and convergence corrections become more and more difficult. Furthermore, with the availability of low cost digital signal processing techniques, it is possible and economically feasible to partially replace or supplement the traditional analog correction methods with digital signal processing.
Video correction involves mathematically operating on an input signal and then processing it in a manner of inverse distortion. With reference to the example given above for convergence errors, the inverse distortion to be performed by video correction is to move the Red sub-image right by the same amount with respect to the Green sub-image as the final CRT distortion will move it to the left and similarly move the Blue sub-image to the left.
The video correction system in this invention works in conjunction with the magnetic field sensor readings of the magnetic field sensor 17. (As such, video correction can be used in any of the embodiments of the inventions to assist in correcting misconvergence or geometry errors of the subimages or both.) Essentially video correction information based on predetermined magnetic field configurations is stored in a memory. This memory can be created, for example, during the display system manufacture by simulating a plurality of local earth magnetic field conditions relative to CRT system orientation. For each such simulation condition, optimized video correction parameters are determined. These parameters are stored in local memory. During tube operation, the field sensor 17 measures the local earth magnetic conditions and relays the measurements in the form of an input signal to the controller, which can include the memory. Based on the information from the field sensor 17, register and convergence are optimized by the corresponding coil systems. Further, based on the measured magnetic field information, the closest match to one of a number of original setup conditions is determined and the appropriate video correction parameters stored in memory are utilized. A further refinement may include interpolation of the prestored values so that instead of a match to exact prestored values, interpolated video correction parameters can be used to better optimize the convergence and residual raster geometry.
The CRT according to the invention can also include the application of beam scan velocity modulation (BSVM) in the fast vertical scan direction. BSVM constitutes a sharpness enhancement method that involves local changes in the scan velocity of the electron beam based on brightness transitions in the video signal inputs. A video correction element or digital enhancement unit could provide a suitable BSVM signal.
Regarding video correction, it could be performed by a gate array element and a video correction element. Video correction can occur by first determining the geometric offset resulting from mis-convergence or raster distortion, and establishing the necessary horizontal and vertical displacement (i.e., Δx and Δy) needed to correct the misconvergence offset or raster distortion. The video then undergoes displacement by Δx and Δy to correct for such misconvergence.
To better understand the process by which such video correction occurs, refer to
The result of the interpolation is a distortion vector comprising integer and non-integer components in both the x and y direction. The re-sampling filter 404 consists of a simple remapping of the pixels for the integer component of the distortion vector and of a polyphase filter for the non-integer component. The remapping is conveniently accomplished by reading out a video source memory with adjusted addresses, whereas the integer part of the above interpolation, typically cubic interpolation, is used for the address adjustment.
For performing the non-integer component of the re-sampling operation, filter 404 of
Regarding color purity, a method of obtaining color purity includes the automatic sensing of the magnetic fields, but alone may not provide sufficient correction. Degaussing coils (e.g. twisted loop) can be utilized, but requires a sizeable internal magnetic shield to provide sufficient correction if significant misregister occurs. Also canceller coils can be used and can particulary be helpful for corner correction capability.
This invention identifies the combination of more than one of these other options as the practical method for regaining acceptable magnetic performance from tubes with very high deflection angles, especially for CRT having transposed scanning (i.e. vertically oriented electron guns and horizontal phosphor stripes). (In transposed scanning systems the fast scan rate is in the vertical dimension and the low scan rate is in the horizontal dimension.) There are three main components of a magnetic field effects correction system for such a CRT:
1. Degauss coils 70 (e.g. twisted-loop) (
2. Active correction.
3. DC Canceller Coil 71, 72 to the North/South effects [
Along with two optional components:
4. Automatic sensing of the magnetic fields (e.g. with magnetic field sensor 17 in
5. Individual coils for corner optimization (i.e. corner coils 73 and axial coils 74 in
By adding a canceller coil to the combination of a twisted-loop degauss coil 70 and the active correction concept, the total register correction required by the very-high-deflection-angle tubes can be implemented without the problems caused by the large register corrections required without the canceller coil.
This approach will also allow the internal magnetic shield to be designed so that the corrections for the E/W magnetic field are optimized since the canceller coil will handle the N/S compensation.
The above correction would require some user input to properly set the amplitude of the current in the canceller coils, but if optional component 17 were implemented, then the current level would be handled automatically by the sensing circuit and the processing of that data to create the proper current in the canceller coil.
For some further improvements in performance, additional coils, which are DC, (corner coils 73, axial coil 74) as shown in
The advantages of the invention can be used in CRTs of any deflection angle with any arrangement of the electron guns. However, CRTs having deflection angles of 100° to 125° with vertically oriented electron guns are particularly vulnerable to ambient magnetic environments, and as such, these displays will perform better in terms of convergence and purity when employing the embodiments disclosed. Further, those skilled in the art will appreciate that CRTs with deflections angles greater than 125° such as 140° or greater (especially with vertically oriented electron guns), would even more greatly benefit from the implementation of the embodiments described, because the spacial constraints at such deflection angles leave very little room to implement any internal magnetic shield. As such, a magnetic shield on its own coupled standard convergence and purity correction technology will not suffice to ensure adequate CRT performance at such large deflection angles.
An advantage of the invention is that it effectively corrects for sample-to-sample variability that can occur in CRT manufacturing and variability that can occur from location-to-location regarding purity and/or convergence within given CRTs. The variability can include variability in CRTs, yokes, electron guns and setup conditions in the CRT factory. The invention is more effective than the level of correction that the standard static corrections typically used in the CRT industry can offer for given tubes, because the invention allows for one level of correction commensurate with a deficiency in one area and another level of correction commensurate with some other level of deficiency in another area).
This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/713,106, filed Aug. 31, 2005, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/US2006/023240 | 6/14/2006 | WO | 00 | 2/14/2008 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60713106 | Aug 2005 | US |