A circuit device includes: a color reduction circuit configured to execute color reduction processing from input image data in which pixel data is m bits to color-reduced image data in which pixel data is n bits, and configured to apply spatial error diffusion or temporal error diffusion in the color reduction processing; a storage circuit storing the color-reduced image data; and an image conversion circuit configured to execute image conversion processing, which is at least one of mapping processing and scaling processing, on the color-reduced image data stored in the storage circuit to output output image data, and configured to execute interpolation processing, which is in the image conversion processing, of generating pixel data of the output image data from a plurality of pieces of pixel data of the color-reduced image data.

A display device includes a display controller that performs a high-throughput dithering operation. The display controller performs a quantization operation with pixel values generated by a graphics processor to generate quantized pixel values and residual error values. The display controller distributes the residual error values associated with a first group of quantized pixel values to a second group of quantized pixel values based on a set of distribution weights. A given distribution weight defines what fraction of a given residual error value is distributed to a given quantized pixel value included in the second group of quantized pixel values. The distribution weights are calibrated to permit the display controller to compute different fractions of residual error values using bit shifting logic instead of complex combinatorial logic.

Systems and methods are provided to perform refresh-rate dependent dithering. One embodiment describes a computing device that includes an image source that generates spatially dithered image data and an electronic display communicatively coupled to the image source. More specifically, the electronic display receives the spatially dithered image data from the image source and determines a refresh rate with which to display an image by comparing a local histogram and an artifact histogram, in which the local histogram describes pixel grayscale distribution of a portion of the image and the artifact histogram describes a pixel grayscale distribution that when displayed will cause a perceivable artifact. Additionally, when the determined refresh rate is less than a threshold refresh rate of the electronic device, the electronic display spatially dithers the image data without temporally dithering the image data and displays the image based at least in part on the spatially dithered image data.