The present invention is related to a timing controller circuit applied to a display panel, and more particularly, to a timing controller circuit that increases a charge time by switching a gate in panel (GIP) timing and generating a data masking signal.
In recent years, the size of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels has become larger and the resolution of the LCD panels has become higher, thereby shortening the charging time of a data line of the LCD panels. As a result, the charging time of LCD panels with high resolution is insufficient meaning the grayscale of the LCD panel cannot be displayed correctly. Panel manufacturers have proposed various methods to improve the problem of insufficient charging time. For example, an HG2D (half gate, two data) architecture is proposed in a panel with a specification of 8Kx4K @ 120 Hertz (Hz) (i.e. the resolution of the panel is 8Kx4K, and the frame rate of the panel is 120 Hz), which will sequentially turn on two gates in all gates of the panel at the same time, so that the charging time can be increased to twice that of the charging time under a 1G1D (one gate, one data) architecture. The HG2D architecture will increase a number of the source drivers, however, which leads to increased costs. As a result, a novel timing controller circuit is urgently needed to improve the problem of insufficient charge time.
It is therefore one of the objectives of the present invention to provide a timing controller circuit that increases the charge time by switching a GIP timing and generating a data masking signal.
In an embodiment of the present invention, a timing controller circuit that is arranged to at least control a GIP circuit in a display panel is provided. The timing controller circuit may include a data receiving circuit, a timing detection circuit, a control circuit, and a data transmitting circuit. The data receiving circuit may be arranged to receive an image data. The timing detection circuit may be coupled to the data receiving circuit, and may be arranged to detect an input timing of the image data. The control circuit may be coupled to the timing detection circuit, and may be arranged to determine a GIP timing of the GIP circuit according to the input timing of the image data, and generate a timing control output according to the GIP timing, wherein in response to different input timings of the image data, the control circuit performs switching selection between different GIP timings of the GIP circuit. The data transmitting circuit may be coupled to the control circuit, and may be arranged to transmit the timing control output to the GIP circuit.
In an embodiment of the present invention, a timing controller circuit that is arranged to at least control a GIP circuit in a display panel is provided. The timing controller circuit may include a data receiving circuit, a timing detection circuit, a data processing circuit, a control circuit, and a data transmitting circuit. The data receiving circuit may be arranged to receive an image data. The timing detection circuit may be coupled to the data receiving circuit, and may be arranged to detect an input timing of the image data. The data processing circuit may be coupled to the timing detection circuit, and may be arranged to perform data masking on the image data according to the input timing of the image data, to generate a data masking signal. The control circuit may be coupled to the timing detection circuit, and may be arranged to determine a GIP timing of the GIP circuit according to the input timing of the image data, and generate a timing control output according to the GIP timing. The data transmitting circuit may be coupled to the control circuit and the data processing circuit, and may be arranged to transmit the timing control output and the data masking signal to the display panel.
In an embodiment of the present invention, a timing controller circuit that is arranged to at least control a GIP circuit in a display panel is provided. The timing controller circuit may include a data receiving circuit, a timing detection circuit, a control circuit, and a data transmitting circuit. The data receiving circuit may be arranged to receive an image data. The timing detection circuit may be coupled to the data receiving circuit, and may be arranged to detect an input timing of the image data. The control circuit may be coupled to the timing detection circuit, and may be arranged to determine a GIP timing of the GIP circuit according to the input timing of the image data, and generate a timing control output according to the GIP timing. The data transmitting circuit may be coupled to the control circuit, and may be arranged to transmit the timing control output to the display panel, wherein the timing control output controls the GIP circuit to sequentially turn on at least two gates in all gates of the display panel at the same time.
When the resolution and the frame rate of the display panel are 8Kx2K and 60 Hz, respectively, and the input timing of the image data is 8Kx2K @ 120 Hz, the timing controller circuit of the present invention will control the GIP circuit to sequentially turn on two gate lines in a plurality of gate lines of the display panel at the same time (i.e. sequentially turn on two gates in the gates of a plurality of thin film transistors (TFT) connected to a same data line in the display panel at the same time), wherein sub-pixels corresponding to the two gates, respectively, will display a same sub-pixel data transmitted by the data transmitting circuit in the image data. In this way, the frame rate of the display panel is increased from the original 60 Hz to 120 Hz (i.e. doubled). In addition, the horizontal resolution of the display panel is maintained at 8 K, and the vertical resolution of the display panel is reduced from 4 K to 2 K; however, the resolution of the display panel is still maintained at true 8 K. As a result, under the condition that the timing controller circuit of the present invention has only one timing controller, the frame rate of the display panel is increased, and the dynamic visuals of the display panel will be improved. In addition, the charge time of each data line of the display panel is maintained at 3.74 microseconds (µs).
In addition, when the resolution and the frame rate of the display panel are 8Kx4K and 120 Hz, respectively, and the input timing of the image data is 8Kx4K @ 120 Hz, the timing controller circuit of the present invention will generate a data masking signal to control the source driver circuit to mask odd line data and only drive even line data in each even frame of the image data, and control the source driver circuit to mask the even line data and only drive the odd line data in each odd frame of the image data. In this way, each frame of the display panel will only display data whose input timing is 8Kx2K @ 120 Hz. As a result, the timing controller circuit of the present invention may utilize the interlaced scanning structure to double the charging time of each data line of the display panel from the original 1.87 µs to 3.74 µs, to thereby improve the problem of insufficient charging time.
These and other objectives of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment that is illustrated in the various figures and drawings.
The timing controller circuit 10 may be arranged to receive the image data IDATA, and detect an input timing IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA. In addition, the timing controller circuit 10 may perform data masking on the image data IDATA according to the input timing IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA to generate a data masking signal DATA_MASK, and determine a GIP timing GIP_TIMING of the GIP circuit 14 according to the input timing IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA, wherein the timing controller circuit 10 may generate a timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT to the GIP circuit 14 according to the GIP timing GIP_TIMING. It should be noted that, in some embodiments, in response to different input timings IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA, the timing controller circuit 10 will perform switching selection between different GIP timings GIP_TIMING of the GIP circuit 14. In addition, in some embodiments, the timing controller circuit 10 will not perform data masking on the image data IDATA according to the input timing IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA (i.e. the data masking signal DATA_MASK will not be generated), but instead will directly transmit the image data IDATA to the display panel 12 (e.g. the source driver circuit 18 of the display panel 12). Then, the timing controller circuit 10 may transmit the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT and the image data IDATA (or the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT, the image data IDATA, and the data masking signal DATA_MASK) to the display panel 12, wherein the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT is transmitted to the GIP circuit 14, and the image data IDATA (or the image data IDATA and the data masking signal DATA_MASK) is transmitted to the source driver circuit 18.
In this embodiment, the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT may include a first starting pulse signal STVA, a second starting pulse signal STVB, and a plurality of clock signals CLK1-CLKM. The first starting pulse signal STVA may be arranged to pre-charge the shift register 20_1 in the shift registers 20_1-20_N, to sequentially turn on a plurality of odd shift registers (i.e. the shift register 20_1, the shift register 20_3, the shift register 20_5, and so on) corresponding to a plurality of odd gate lines (i.e. GL_1, GL_3, GL_5, and so on) in the GIP circuit 14. The second starting pulse signal STVB may be arranged to pre-charge the shift register 20_2 in the shift registers 20_1-20_N, to sequentially turn on a plurality of even shift registers (i.e. the shift register 20_2, the shift register 20_4, the shift register 20_6, and so on) corresponding to a plurality of even gate lines (i.e. GL_2, GL_4, GL_6, and so on) in the GIP circuit 14. The clock signals CLK1-CLKM may be arranged to drive the odd gate lines and the even gate lines through the odd shift registers and the even shift registers, respectively, to turn on the gates connected to each gate line (e.g. the gates 16_1-16_N in the vertical direction will be turned on one by one according to the driving timing of the gate lines GL_1-GL_N) . For example, under the condition that the resolution of the display panel 12 is 8Kx4K (i.e. the display panel 12 may include the gates 16_1-16_4320, which are the gates of 4320 TFTs on the same data line, respectively) , the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT may include the clock signals CLK1-CLK10 (i.e. M=10), wherein each of the clock signals CLK1-CLK10 has 432 pulses to turn on 432 gate lines in the 4320 gate lines GL_1-GL_4320, respectively. For the gates 16_1-16_4320 of 4320 TFTs on the same data line, the 432 pulses of each clock signal of the clock signals CLK1-CLK10 will turn on 432 gates in the gates 16_1-16_4320 (e.g. the 432 pulses in the clock signal CLK1 will turn on the gates 16_1, 16_11, 16_21, ..., 16_4311, respectively).
As shown in
For example, when the input timing IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA is 8Kx4K @ 60 Hz, the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT will control the GIP circuit 14 to sequentially turn on each gate line in the gate lines GL_1-GL_4320 of the display panel 12 (i.e. sequentially turn on each gate in the gates 16_1-16_4320 in the vertical direction that are connected to the same data line in the display panel 12), to illuminate the display panel 12. In another example, when the input timing IN_TIMING of the image data IDATA is 8Kx2K @ 120 Hz, the timing control output TIMING_OUTPUT will control the GIP circuit 14 to sequentially turn on two gate lines in the gate lines GL_1-GL_4320 of the display panel 12 at the same time (i.e. sequentially turn on two gates in the gates 16_1-16_4320 in the vertical direction that are connected to the same data line in the display panel 12 at the same time), wherein the sub-pixels corresponding to the two gates, respectively, will display the same sub-pixel data transmitted by the data transmitting circuit 208 in the image data IDATA at the same time. In this way, the frame rate of the display panel 12 is increased from the original 60 Hz to 120 Hz (i.e. doubled). In addition, the horizontal resolution of the display panel is maintained at 8 K, and the vertical resolution of the display panel is reduced from 4 K to 2 K. The resolution of the display panel, however, is still maintained at true 8 K. As a result, under the condition that the timing controller circuit 200 has only one timing controller 201, the frame rate of the display panel 12 is increased, and the dynamic visuals of the display panel 12 will be improved. In addition, the charge time of each data line of the display panel 12 is maintained at 3.74 microseconds (µs).
As shown in
In this embodiment, the data masking signal DATA_MASK may be arranged to control the source driver circuit 18 to mask odd line data and only drive even line data in each even frame of the image data IDATA, and control the source driver circuit 17 to mask the even line data and only drive the odd line data in each odd frame of the image data IDATA. In this way, each frame of the display panel 12 will only display the data whose input timing IN_TIMING is 8Kx2K @ 120 Hz. As a result, the timing controller circuit 500 may utilize the interlaced scanning structure to double the charging time of each data line of the display panel 12 from the original 1.87 µs to 3.74 µs, to improve the problem of insufficient charging time.
It is assumed that the image data IDATA has a plurality of odd line data D1, D3, D5, ..., D4319 (where each odd line data includes sub-pixel data that are arranged to drive a plurality of TFTs on a same odd scanning line) and a plurality of even line data (where each even line data includes sub-pixel data that are arranged to drive a plurality of TFTs on a same even scanning line) . Under the condition that the data masking signal DATA_MASK controls the source driver circuit 18, a plurality of odd gates corresponding to a plurality of odd gate lines will only display the odd line data (e.g. the gate 16_1 will only display the odd line data D1, and the gate 16_3 will only display the odd line data D3), and a plurality of even gates corresponding to a plurality of even gate lines will only display the even line data (e.g. the gate 16_2 will only display the even line data D2, and the gate 16_4 will only display the even line data D4). For brevity, only the pulses that correspond to the first 20 gates (i.e. the gates 16_1-16_20) of the gates 16_1 to 16_4320, respectively, are illustrated in
Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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110137957 | Oct 2021 | TW | national |