Methods and systems for processing image data for display on LC displays

1. A method for processing image data in a liquid crystal display (LCD) overdrive system, said method comprising:

receiving original image data for display on an LCD display;

sending said original image data to an overdrive calculation module for calculation of overdrive image data;

sending said overdrive image data to a prediction module for calculation of predicted image data;

reducing a bit depth of said predicted image data using a non-linear mapping function thereby creating reduced image data;

converting said reduced image data from a luminance-integrated color space to a luminance-segregated color space comprising a luminance channel and at least one chrominance channel;

spatially down-sampling said at least one chrominance channel; and

compressing said reduced, converted and down-sampled image using spatial redundancy methods, thereby creating compressed image data;

storing said compressed image data in a buffer;

decompressing said compressed image data after a delay, thereby creating decompressed, delayed image data; and

using said decompressed, delayed image data for overdrive-related calculations for a subsequent image frame.

2. A method as described in claim 1 wherein said reducing the bit depth comprises applying a mapping function using a first linear relationship for a first range of values and a second linear relationship for a second range of values.

3. A method as described in claim 2 wherein said first range of values ranges from approximately 0 to approximately 48.

4. A method as described in claim 2 wherein said first linear relationship results in about a 1:1 ratio.

5. A method as described in claim 2 wherein said second linear relationship results in a higher bit-depth reduction than said first linear relationship.

6. A method as described in claim 2 wherein said second linear relationship results in about a ratio between about 2:1 and about 3:1.

7. A method as described in claim 1 wherein said luminance-integrated color space is an RGB color space.

8. A method as described in claim 1 wherein said luminance-segregated color space is a YCbCr color space.

9. A method as described in claim 1 wherein said spatially down-sampling comprises about a 4:1 reduction in chrominance channel data.

10. A method as described in claim 1 wherein said compressing comprises adaptive block truncation coding (ABTC) compression.

11. A method as described in claim 1 wherein said compressing comprises DCT compression.