Patent ID: 6876342

Claim:
A plasma display apparatus comprising: a panel including a dischargeable gas sealed between a pair of substrates joined to each other, a first electrode and a second electrode located at one substrate in correspondence with each scanning line, and a third electrode located at the other substrate in correspondence with each data line; and a driving unit for driving the first electrode, the second electrode, and the third electrode, sequentially writing and retaining data at an intersection of each scanning line and each data line; wherein said driving unit includes input means, coding means, timing means, addressing means, and sustaining means; said input means inputs multiple-gradation-step data obtained by quantizing a signal; said coding means codes one field of the quantized data by a predetermined rule to thereby convert into data distributed over a plurality of sub-fields; said timing means sequentially outputs a timing signal for each of the sub-fields in synchronism with the coding; said addressing means scans scanning lines in each of the sub-fields in response to the timing signal while writing data assigned to the sub-field via data lines; and said sustaining means includes frequency control means, and applies a driving signal to the first electrode and the second electrode according to a weight of each of the sub-fields, and thereby retains the data written by the addressing means, the driving signal applied to retain the data having, at least in one sub-field, a frequency applied first and a frequency applied thereafter, the frequencies being different from each other.