The present invention relates to a plasma display (PDP) apparatus and a driving method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a PDP apparatus employing the ALIS (Alternate Lighting of Surfaces) method in which display lines are formed on both sides of each sustain discharge electrode and an interlaced display is attained, and a driving method thereof.
In Japanese Patent No. 2801893, a PDP apparatus employing the ALIS method, that can realize a display of high resolution at a low cost, has been disclosed.
The ALIS method is characterized by the interlaced display in which a first display line is formed between each Y electrode and the X electrode that is adjacent upward thereto, a second display line is formed between each Y electrode and the X electrode that is adjacent downward thereto, the first display line is displayed by odd-numbered fields, and the second display line is displayed by even-numbered fields and also characterized in that the number of display lines can be doubled with the same numbers of the X electrodes and the Y electrodes due to this characteristic and a much finer resolution can be attained.
For a PDP apparatus, various techniques have been proposed to improve the display quality and reliability, to reduce power consumption, to reduce in cost, and so on. The present invention relates to the reset operation and, as for this technique, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-75835, the technique to improve the contrast by utilizing the reset pulse that has a voltage waveform of a gradual slope in the panel employing the ALIS method has been disclosed. Also in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-501199, the reset method that utilizes a ramp wave has been disclosed. Furthermore, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-242224, the technique, in which the reset pulse accompanied by lighting of all the display cells is applied only to the first subfield to improve the contrast, has been disclosed. Still furthermore, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-29431, the technique, in which operations can be made stable by changing the reset voltage according to the ratio of light emission pixels in the subfield, has been disclosed, and in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-172224, the technique, in which malfunctions can be suppressed by setting the voltage of the reset pulse according to the number of times of the sustain discharges in the immediately previous subfield, has been disclosed.
Recently, the display performance of the PDP apparatus has considerably improved and a performance almost the same as that of the CRT can be obtained with respect to luminance, resolution, contrast, and so on. As the broadcasting and the video software develop, however, further improvement is expected on the part of the display apparatus, and the dark room contrast is also required to improve further. The luminance of the black display, which causes the darkroom contrast to degrade, is the result of the light emission of the reset discharge needed to stabilize discharge, therefore, it has been necessary to cause a reset discharge to occur sufficiently in order to perform addressing of many display lines at a high speed, and the discharge has been needed to have a luminance of a certain level. As described above, stable operations and the dark room contrast are in the relationship of trade-off. According to the above-mentioned Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-242224, the background light emission (black luminance) is considerably reduced and the darkroom contrast improved by applying the reset pulse accompanied by lighting of all of the display cells once in one field, that is, only in one subfield, and by carrying out the erase discharge only in the display cells that were lit in the previous subfield, for the other subfields.
On the other hand, in the PDP apparatus employing the ALIS method disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2801893, a dark room contrast of about 500:1 can be obtained by utilizing the reset pulse of the slope-shaped waveform disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-75835. In this method, however, the reset discharge for all of the display cells is carried out in every subfield and, therefore, the luminance becomes about ten times as high as that of the background light emission when the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-242224 is applied. In a panel or a high-resolution panel that employs a method such as the ALIS method in which every gap between every pair of adjacent electrodes is used as a display line, the coupling between two adjacent display cells vertically apart is strong and it may easily happen that charges diffuse from a lit cell to an unlit cell. As a result, the condition of a display cell is altered even though the address discharge or the sustain discharge is not carried out after resetting. It has been necessary, therefore, to carry out the reset discharge for all of the display cells, including unlit cells, in order to be able to stably perform the address discharge in the next subfield.
As describe above, in such a panel employing the ALIS method, in which the electrodes of adjacent cells exist very closely, a reset discharge aimed at all the display cells of each subfield has been indispensable. Moreover, the reset voltage has been specified, a case in which the accumulated discharges are maximum being taken into account, and resetting has been performed with the voltage in all the subfields. Therefore, the reset voltage has been high and an improvement in the dark room contrast has not been sufficient because it is difficult to reduce the background light emission to below a certain level.
The present invention aims to solve these problems and the object is to realize a driving method of a PDP apparatus and a PDP apparatus that can sufficiently reduce the background light emission and further improve the dark room contrast even for a panel employing the ALIS method, in which the electrodes of adjacent cells exist closely.
In order to realize the above-mentioned object, in the present invention, the reset voltage that directly relates to the intensity of the background light emission can be altered according to the number of times of sustain discharges or the display state of each subfield. In this way, it is possible to improve the darkroom contrast by suppressing the background light emission, compared to a conventional way, because the reset discharge is caused to occur with the minimum voltage for each subfield. In concrete terms, the reset period first comprises a first erase period in which the wall charges of a display cell that was lit in the previous subfield are erased, secondly a write period in which a discharge is caused to occur for all the display cells to form the wall charges, and finally a second erase period in which all or part of the wall charges are erased again by a discharge, and the final voltage in the write period is adjusted.
The features and advantages of the invention will be more clearly understood from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
The embodiments of the present invention are described below, with example cases in which the present invention is applied to a PDP apparatus, employing the ALIS method disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2001893, which has the structure as shown in
The present invention is characterized in that a voltage, which is applied to the X electrode and the Y electrode in the first erase period and the write period, is adjusted. As shown in
In the first embodiment, only the voltage Vw, which is applied to the Y electrode in the write period of the reset period, is made variable and this voltage is referred to as the reset voltage. In the first embodiment, the reset voltage in the first subfield is made greatest for the reasons described below. The first reason is that it is necessary to maintain active the side of a pair of electrodes that were not lit in the previous field, because the display of odd-numbered rows and that of even-numbered rows are switched in the first subfield in the ALIS method. The second reason is that since the period of each field is synchronized with the vertical synchronization signal entered from the outside of the display apparatus, it is necessary to generate space charges by causing a comparably strong discharge to occur in advance in all of the display cells when the video signal has a long period of the vertical synchronization signal, because the interval between the completion of the final subfield and the inception of the first subfield is lengthened and the priming effect that affects the stability of discharge is degraded. The third reason is that since the number of times of the sustain discharge in the tenth subfield is large, it may happen that many electrons have accumulated in the adjacent cells as shown in
The reset voltage in the second subfield can be lowered to below that of the first subfield because the first and the second reasons described above no longer exist, although the number of times of the sustain discharges in the immediately previous first subfield is large.
The number of times of the sustain discharges in the fifth subfield is the least, and is only a few times, and there are few charges accumulated in the adjacent display cells as described in
The reset voltages of the third subfield through the fifth subfield are between the reset voltage of the second subfield and that of the sixth subfield, and the reset voltages of the seventh subfield through the tenth subfield are set to those which are slightly greater than that of the sixth subfield because the length of the sustain discharge period gradually increases. The length of the reset period is fixed in the first embodiment.
In the third embodiment, at the same time as the switch 54 is turned off when the reset voltage reaches a fixed value, the next erase process is initiated.
The first through third embodiments are described above, and it is needless to say that the optimum values are set for each voltage and output voltage according to the panel design or drive conditions.
As described above, the main reason is that the charges generated by the discharge diffuse and accumulate on the electrodes of the adjacent display cells when the number of times of the sustain discharges is large. Therefore, when the number of times of the sustain discharges is small in the previous field, it is possible to lower the reset voltage in the next field. For example, a power increase is limited by shortening the length of the sustain discharge period when the display ratio is high in the PDP apparatus and, in such a case, it is possible to lower the reset voltage in the write discharge process.
As described above, according to the present invention, the background luminance can be suppressed and the dark room contrast can be improved because it is not necessary to apply an excessively great voltage for the reset discharge in each subfield.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2001-240662 | Aug 2001 | JP | national |
This application is a continuation application of application Ser. No. 12/171,624, filed Jul. 11, 2008 now U.S. Pat. No. 8,094,092, which is a continuation application of application Ser. No. 11/717,207, filed Mar. 13, 2007, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,868,852, issued Jan. 1, 2011, which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 10/852,204, filed May 25, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,212,177, issued May 1, 2007, which is a continuation of Ser. No. 10/080,410, filed Feb. 25, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,809,708, issued Oct. 26, 2004, and is related to and claims priority to Japanese application No. 2001-240662, filed Aug. 8 2001, the disclosures of all of which being incorporated herein by reference.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 12171624 | Jul 2008 | US |
Child | 13200345 | US | |
Parent | 11717207 | Mar 2007 | US |
Child | 12171624 | US | |
Parent | 10852204 | May 2004 | US |
Child | 11717207 | US | |
Parent | 10080410 | Feb 2002 | US |
Child | 10852204 | US |