AbstractThe electrowetting display (EWD) has a low gray level, and there are some phenomena that affect the display quality, such as oil backflow and charge trapping. In this paper, an error diffusion algorithm based on pixel neighborhood gray information and direct current (DC)‐balanced driving waveform are proposed for display quality of EWD. The proposed algorithm and driving waveform are implemented in the proposed driving system based on Digital Visual Interface (DVI) video codec system and field‐programmable gate array (FPGA) control system. The experiment results show that the driving waveform suppresses the oil backflow, charge trapping and keeps DC balance, and the proposed error diffusion preserves the edges and richness of image. The whole driving system successfully plays video in real time with computer and improves the display quality of EWD.