Patent ID: 7580031

Claim:
A method for reducing power consumed by a display device, the method comprising: displaying an active graphics component in a first portion of a display area provided by the display device; in response to user inactivity in an inactive portion of the display area that is outside the first portion, altering video information in the inactive portion using a histogram manipulation of luminance values for a set of pixels in the inactive portion such that the display device will consume less power when displaying the altered video information than an amount of power that would be required to display the video information without the alteration, wherein altering the video information includes a) altering the luminance values using a histogram compression of a histogram to produce compressed luminance values, and b) reducing the compressed luminance values using a constant, and wherein a) and b) occur at a threshold inactivity time; and simultaneously displaying the active graphics component in the first portion and the altered video information in the inactive portion.