Patent ID: 7138966

Claim:
A plasma display device comprising (i) a plasma display panel with a plurality of discharge cells between front and back panels, and (ii) a driving circuit operable to drive the plasma display panel to display a grayscale image by selectively having the discharge cells emit light in a subfield with a desired luminance weight, a plurality of subfields with different luminance weights forming one field, wherein each subfield includes a write period and a discharge sustain period, at least two subfields are in a relation that (i) a number of sustain pulses applied in an m-th subfield is different from that in an n-th subfield, and (ii) a first time period from an end of the discharge sustain period in the m-th subfield until an application of a write pulse in an (m+1)-th subfield is different in length from a corresponding second time period between the n-th subfield and an (n+1)-th subfield, and wherein when the number of the sustain pulses in the m-th subfield is greater than or equal to a predetermined number, the first time period is calculated by adding an extension time period that is set based on the number of the sustain pulses in the m-th subfield to a base time period, where the base time period is a length of time from an end of the discharge sustain period in any subfield having sustain pulses less than the predetermined number until an application of the write pulse in a succeeding subfield, where each of m, n, (m+1), and (n+1) is a natural number that indicates a subfield number in one field.