Patent ID: 7696957

Claim:
A driving method of a plasma display panel to perform a gradation display in accordance with a video signal, the plasma display panel having discharge cells, functioning as pixels, at intersections of a plurality of row electrode pairs corresponding to display lines and a plurality of column electrodes arranged to intersect the row electrode pairs, the method comprising the steps of: performing an address writing process for producing a discharge between one of the row electrode pairs and the column electrodes in the remaining discharge cells excluding those discharge cells serving to display a luminance level “0”, only in the first one of a plurality of subfields constituting a unit display period of the video signal so as to set the discharge cells to a light emitting cell state; performing, in each of the subfields, an address erasing process for selectively producing a discharge in the discharge cells in their light emitting cell states in accordance with pixel data corresponding to the video signal so as to change the states of the discharge cells to a non-light emitting cell state, and a sustain process for allowing only those discharge cells in their light emitting cell states to emit light by a number of times corresponding to the number of light emissions allocated in correspondence with a weighting factor for each of the subfields; producing a discharge only in the discharge cells in their light emitting cell states, only in the address erasing process for one subfield selected from the subfields, so as to change the states of the discharge cells to the non-light emitting cell state; and supplying a voltage for charging the column electrodes to a negative polarity between the one of the row electrode pairs and the column electrodes, in either of the address writing process and the address erasing process, thereby producing the discharge between the one of the row electrode pairs and the column electrodes.