Patent ID: 8305300

Claim:
A method for driving a plasma display panel having a plurality of discharge cells with a display electrode that is formed of a pair of a scan electrode and a sustain electrode, wherein the method effects gradation control of the plasma display panel in a manner that one field is formed of a plurality of sub-fields, each sub-field having an initializing period for generating an initializing discharge in the discharge cells, an address period for carrying out an addressing operation in the discharge cells and a sustain period for generating a sustain discharge in the discharge cells where an address discharge is generated by the addressing operation, the initializing period of at least one of the sub-fields undergoes an all-cell initializing operation for carrying out the initializing operation on all of the discharge cells for image display; when at least one sub-field carries out the addressing operation after the all-cell initializing operation, a subsequent plurality of predetermined sub-fields carry out the addressing operation in the respective address period, the predetermined sub-fields corresponding to a predetermined gradation level, and at least one of the predetermined sub-fields includes an unusual-charge erase period between the initializing period and the address period, the unusual-charge erase period includes application of a voltage with a rectangular waveform including a positive voltage and a negative voltage applied to the scan electrode, wherein the negative voltage is following the positive voltage.