Method to Improve Moving Picture Quality of PDPs Affected by Dynamic False Contour Artifacts

Abstract

T he plasma display panel (PDP) is a promising candidate for use as a high-quality-picture flat display for wall-hanging television sets. There has been a lot of work done from various theoretical aspects in the effort to develop practical PDPs. 1-3 We have been conducting wide-ranging research and development work with the aim of developing a wall-hanging HDTV system using a PDP display. In 1992, we for the first time produced a 40-in.diagonal PDP prototype capable of displaying HDTV images. 4 We also developed a HDTV display using a 42in.-diagonal high-definition DC PDP in time for the Winter Olympic Games held in Nagano, Japan, in 1998. Figure 1 shows the structure of the 42-in.diagonal panel and Table 1 gives the specifications and characteristics of the 42-in. PDP we developed. 5An important consideration when developing the 42-in. PDP for use with HDTV was the quality of moving pictures. PDPs are well known to suffer from picture quality deterioration caused by dynamic false contour artifacts when displaying moving pictures, such as television images, because of the display method that they use, that is, the sub-field method. 6-8 Although various techniques have been proposed to minimize this picture deterioration, [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] there has been no quantitative evaluation of the degree to which they improve picture quality. In addition, because HDTV intrinsically requires high picture quality, the PDP has to provide considerably improved picture quality. In the process of developing the PDP-HDTV display we carried out studies on how to eliminate the causes of the deterioration of moving-picture quality.In this paper, we propose the combination of "time-compression emission," "weighted division of upper bits," and "adaptive sub-field control (SFC)" as methods to create high-picture-quality PDPs. We will demonstrate quantitatively the effectiveness of using these methods through simulations and subjective evaluations. We have not come across in the literature available any attempt to quantify through subjective evaluations the effect of dynamic false contour artifacts on the quality of moving pictures.The deterioration of the picture quality of displayed moving pictures caused by dynamic false contour artifacts is a serious impediment to obtaining good picture quality on PDPs (plasma display panels). The artifacts arise from the sub-field method used to represent the grayscale. We propose a combination of two methods, time-compression of emission and weighted division of upper signal bits, to improve picture quality. Each technique has a separate and important role in the improvement of quality. We also propose an additional technique for reducing the frequency with which the artifacts appear. The proposed methods were evaluated by computer simulation and subjective testing. The results showed that these methods significantly improved the moving picture quality of a PDP and provided a picture of acceptable quality for viewing on an HDTV receiver. A high-quality 42-in.-diagonal PDP-HDTV receiv...

Commission C: Signals and Systems

“…A digital HDTV receiver with a 50-in-diagonal plasma display panel has been developed and put on the market. [Yamamoto et al, 2001]. Language), a text-based language, has been developed for making complete TV programs on a PC.…”

65.1: Invited Paper: Digital HDTV Expands with Plasma Displays

“…NHK, Matsushita and the PDP Consortium in Japan co-developed the first HDTV PDP-TV, which had 1035 display cells vertically, at the end of 1997, just before Winter Olympic in Nagano, Japan. NHK broadcasted HDTV programs of the Olympic games throughout Japan and demonstrated the excellent performance of HDTV with an analogue broadcasting system and the developed PDP-TV [5] ( Figure 4).…”