Patent ID: 8564507

Claim:
A display apparatus comprising: a backlight unit which emits a light; and a display panel which receives the light to display an image, wherein the backlight unit comprises: a driving circuit which outputs a driving voltage and a reference voltage; and p light source blocks connected to the driving circuit, p being a natural number greater than or equal to 2, wherein each light source block of the p light source blocks receives the driving voltage through a first terminal thereof and the reference voltage through a second terminal thereof to generate the light, and the p light source blocks are divided into a plurality of groups, each group including at least two light source blocks, wherein the driving circuit comprises: a first switching section which applies the driving voltage to first terminals of the p light source blocks; and a second switching section which applies the reference voltage to the second terminal of at least one of the p light source blocks, wherein the first switching section comprises n switching devices commonly connected to each other, n being a natural number greater than or equal to 1, and each of the n switching devices is connected to first terminals of the at least two light source blocks in a group corresponding thereto, wherein the second switch section comprises m switching devices commonly connected to each other, m being a natural number greater than or equal to 1, and each of the m switching devices is connected to at least one of second terminals of the at least two light source blocks of each group, wherein the driving circuit supplies n first control signals to the n switching devices, and supplies m second control signals to the m switching devices, and wherein a high level duration of a first control signal of the n first control signals and a high level duration of a second control signal of the m second control signal substantially overlap with each other in time, and a turn-on duration of a light source block which receives the first control signal and the second control signal is determined by a substantially overlapping time period of the high level duration of the first control signal and the high level duration of the second control signal at the start of each frame.