Patent ID: 7738719

Claim:
Method for processing a video data signal to be displayed on a display device having a plurality of luminous elements corresponding to pixels of a picture, wherein a duration of a video frame or field is divided into a plurality of sub-fields during which the luminous elements can be activated for light emission in small pulses corresponding to a sub-field code word of n bits used for encoding p possible video levels lighting a pixel, comprising the steps of: performing cell-based, pixel-based or multi-mask dithering for reducing a quantization error, said dithering outputting a dither value “1” or “0” for each pixel or cell, a cell being a luminous element of a pixel, and performing an error diffusion for each pixel or cell in a diffusion means for reducing the quantization error, wherein the error diffusion for a pixel or cell, during error diffusion, is added to a value of said pixel or cell if the dither value of said pixel or cell is equal to “1” and is not added and re-injected into the diffusion means if the dither value is equal to “0” for avoiding artifacts in the displayed video data on the display device, and wherein the code words are processed with more than n bits, so that values lying between the values of rendered code words can be formed, and the error diffusion is applied on all bits of each of these values.