Local Dimming of LED LCD TVs implemented on ASICs

Objective: The TV application consumes roughly 10% of electricity of private households. The power consumption will further increase, since the screen size, the display brightness and the number of TV sets will increase. In order to reduce/limit this power consumption, most governments of the world set regulation like energy label. This was the motivation of our research in the field of local dimming LCD backlight. Since TV is a high volume market, it is very cost-sensitive. The local dimming technology must therefore be a part of a System on a Chip for TV. There are three objectives: 1) high power saving; 2) high visual quality; 3) lower HW cost. High power saving may even improve the visual quality like static contrast. The clouding artifact, which is the most annoying disadvantage of the Edge-Lit/Side-Lit LCD, may disappear. However, high power saving rate may produce perceivable undesirable artifacts like clipping. The algorithm should suppress visible clipping and allow a better trade-off between power saving and clipping. In addition, the algorithm and the HW design must be higly efficient. This means that the logic complexity and the memory needed are low, while the processing speed is high allowing high frame rate.