Patent ID: 8098217

Claim:
A driving device that drives a plasma display panel including a plurality of discharge cells at intersections of a scan electrode and a sustain electrode with a plurality of data electrodes by a sub-field method where one field period includes a plurality of sub-fields, comprising: a driver that generates a write discharge by selectively applying a write pulse to said plurality of discharge cells in a write period of each of the sub-fields and causes a discharge cell in which said write discharge has been generated to emit light with a predetermined display luminance in a sustain period; a selector that selects any of a first sub-field configuration where a width of write pulse in a sub-field with a lowest display luminance is not more than widths of the write pulses in other sub-fields and a second sub-field configuration where the width of the write pulse in the sub-field with the lowest display luminance is larger than the widths of the write pulses in the other sub-fields; and a voltage setter that sets a voltage applied to said sustain electrode in the write period of the sub-field with the lowest display luminance higher than a voltage applied to said sustain electrode in the write periods of the other sub-fields when said first sub-field configuration is selected by said selector and sets the voltage applied to said sustain electrode in the write period of the sub-field with the lowest display luminance to be the same as the voltage applied to said sustain electrode in the write period of any of the other sub-fields when the second sub-field configuration is selected by said selector, wherein the sub-field with the lowest display luminance in said second sub-field configuration is a sub-field that does not include a setup period in which setup discharges are performed in part or all of said plurality of discharge cells.