Intelligent Liquid Crystal Display (i-LCD) for Next Generation Television Applications

This paper presents a new architecture for liquid crystal display television (LCD TV), intelligent LCD (i-LCD), which enables communication between the image processing board and the LCD panel. This allows the image processing board to change key parameters in real time, which are necessary for full LCD panel functionality. i-LCD has a serial digital interface just like a communication channel where all the circuits are connected to a digital interface. Examples of two new circuits for i-LCD are found here; they generate a common electrode voltage (Vcom) and gamma reference voltages. Both Vcom and the gamma voltages affect the long term operation of LCD TV panels and can be used to eliminate panel-to-panel color difference. An automatic optimization system is presented with proven automatic Vcom and gamma voltage tuning times of 0.35 s and 4 s, respectively. Hence, automatically optimized high quality LCD panels can be implemented in LCD TV. Other applications of i-LCD are also discussed.