BACKLIGHT GENERATION WITH LOCAL DIMMING FOR LIQUID CRYSTAL PANEL HAVING ARBITRARY SHAPE

In a liquid crystal display (LCD), a liquid crystal (LC) panel has a display area of arbitrary shape. A light-emitting area of a backlight panel is partitioned into zones for providing local dimming to the LC panel. The LC panel is partitioned into display regions. An apparatus for controlling the LC panel and the backlight panel has zone registers each recording a proportion of area of a zone covered by a corresponding display region. The apparatus computes a dimming factor for the zone according to its recorded proportion and pixel data of a portion of image located on the zone, allowing local dimming to be provided without requiring boundary information of the display area. A two-phase arrangement is used to calculate the dimming factor, achieving local dimming to save power in backlight generation while reducing a potential loss of image brightness in high-brightness part of the image portion.