Patent ID: 7317431

Claim:
A method of grayscale-driving a display panel in accordance with pixel data derived from a video signal, the display panel including a plurality of display lines, with a plurality of pixel cells serving as pixels being arranged on each of the plurality of display lines, a display period of a single field of the video signal being divided into a plurality of subfields, the method comprising: dividing one of the plurality of subfields into M lower subfields (M is an integer greater than one); making M groups of display lines by sequentially taking every M display lines from the plurality of display lines of the display panel; performing first to Mth address steps in the M lower subfields respectively and sequentially, each said address step setting the pixel cells belonging to the display lines of the display line group concerned, to a drive mode determined by the pixel data; performing a first light emission step to cause the pixel cells whose drive mode is a lit mode, to emit light directly before or after the address step concerned; dividing another one of the plurality of subfields into N lower subfields (N is smaller than M); making N groups of address steps from the first to Mth address steps, each said address step group including one or more address steps, at least one of said N address step groups including a plurality of address steps; performing the N address step groups in the N lower subfields respectively and sequentially; and performing a second light emission step to cause the pixel cells whose drive mode is the lit mode, to emit light directly before or after the address step group concerned.