This paper proposes a simple control method to improve the ignition behavior of cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) in digital-dimming control. Due to restriking manipulation in digital-dimming mode, the lamp life of CCFL is reduced substantially. To extend the lamp life, we realize a digital-dimming controller with soft-starting technique (DDC-SST) to reduce the high ignition voltage and to eliminate the ignition current spike. The half-bridge resonant inverter is employed in the presented backlight system. Complete analysis and design considerations are discussed in detail in this paper. Simulation and experimental results are close to the theoretical prediction. The overall efficiency of the system achieved at the rated power is over 91%. The ignition voltage is reduced about 30% without any lamp current spike occurred under digital-dimming operation.