METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DYNAMICALLY CHANGING PIXEL DEPTH

摘要

An electronic device (108) includes a display panel (126) and a display controller (124) for controlling the display panel (126). A plurality of data lines supplies image data to the display panel (126). The data lines include data lines for supplying red image data, green image data, and blue image data. Masking gates (118) are provided between a video buffer (116) and the display controller (124). A method of reducing power consumption includes masking selected ones of the data lines at predetermined times. The masking reduces the pixel depth of the image data. Thus, the pixel depth is reduced without re-encoding the source video data. Reducing the number of state transitions in the video data path reduces power consumption, thus longer battery life.