Patent ID: 8144113

Claim:
A liquid crystal display comprising: a liquid crystal panel having a plurality of liquid crystal cells formed respectively in a plurality of pixel areas defined by intersections of a plurality of gate lines and a plurality of data lines; a data driver for supplying data voltages to the data lines; a gate driver for supplying scan signals to the gate lines; a timing controller for controlling the data driver and gate driver and outputting a plurality of dimming signals based on an average picture level (APL) detected based on video data supplied to the liquid crystal panel; and a light emitting diode (LED) backlight unit for partitioning the liquid crystal panel into a plurality of areas and supplying appropriate pulse width modulation (PWM) control signals based on the dimming signals to a plurality of LED arrays installed to correspond respectively to the partitioned areas, to supply light to the liquid crystal panel, wherein the timing controller comprises: a data processor for arranging the video data and supplying the arranged data to the data driver; a control signal generator for generating data and gate control signals for control of the data driver and gate driver; and an LED dimming signal generator for generating the plurality of dimming signals appropriate respectively to the plurality of areas, wherein the LED dimming signal generator comprises: a total APL detector for detecting a total APL of the video data; an APL-by-area detector for detecting APLs-by-areas of the video data supplied to the plurality of areas; and a plurality of lookup tables each for storing dimming values set according to the total APL detected by the total APL detector and the APLs-by-areas detected by the APL-by-area detector and outputting the stored dimming values as the dimming signals, wherein an optimum lookup table of the plurality of lookup tables is selected based on the detected total APL and then the detected APLs-by-areas is matched with the selected lookup table so that optimum dimming signals by areas are supplied to the LED backlight unit.