The Daily Mail (now home to the best sports columnist writing in the English language, Martin Samuel) has a healthy reminder for those of you about to take the plunge into high-definition: be sure to have your vision checked. Vision Express, an optometry chain in the UK, found that 60 percent of Britons haven’t had an eye exam in the past two years—breaking that number down a bit, as much as 79 percent of Scots haven’t seen the ol’ eye doctor in two years. This matters to us because even a slight vision deficiency can prevent you from fully appreciating HDTV in all its glory.
Now, this could well be a plot created by the notorious Eye Council designed to get as many people to read that little letter chart as possible, but it makes sense on some level. Of course, if your vision is horrendous, as mine is, dagnabit, you definitely need glasses or contacts to appreciate the benefits of HDTV. Then again, if your vision is as terrible as mine, you need glasses or contacts to appreciate any kind of television, high-definition or otherwise.
There are other factors here, of course, such as distance from the TV and how large it is, but those are subjects for another day. Quickly, the larger your TV is, the further back you’d have to sit from it to appreciate, say, 1080p versus 720p.
But the overall moral of the story is, make sure you can see properly if you’re gonna spend a bunch of money on a fancy new TV.
Photo: Flickr
We recently got an HDTV for my wife’s grandfather, who has suffering eyesight. We got it specifically because of his weakened eyesight.
He doesn’t seem to notice too much of a difference unfortunately.
Actually, you’d have to sit closer to a TV set (regardless of size) in order to enjoy the difference between 1080P and 720P. The further back you sit, the differences between 1080p and 720P become indecipherable.
thats why a 24″ 720P set is fine for TV watching from 6 feet away, but terrible for using as a computer where you’re sitting 3 feet away from the screen.
these values are just approximations and general values. the principles are the same regardless.
Considering this is in the Daily Mail I think this is just s ploy to get you to spend money on an eye test.
I have been partially sighted since birth and I have HD. I can tell you that for my vision problem HD makes a vast difference. I may not get as much of an advantage as a fully sighted person, but the HD picture doesn’t ‘wobble’ like an sd picture does. This is probably due to there being a higher contrast ratio than an sd picture and therefore there is a greater difference in the light and dark areas which lessens the chance of my eyes getting tired.
I could go on for hours about this but I won’t, apart from to say that also my optic nerve hasn’t formed properly and so there are very small ‘dark spots’ in my vision. When looking at an sd picture it is difficult for me to know if I am looking at a dark area of the screen or if one of these dark spots has come up. When looking at a HD picture it is much easier to know. This may be due to the fact that the ‘dark spots’ are pretty much the size of an sd pixel at the viewing distance I watch tv, but are larger than an HD one.
I suspect that rag is just trying to have another go at those of us who have eyesight that can’t be corrected and they are trying to get others to worry about their eyesight enough to increase the profits of the company mentioned in the article.
I wonder if they own shares in that company?
Forget the eyetest.
Opticians don’t know what they are talking about.
The -3.75 myopia and astigamatism I had for 25 years that no optician did anything to make any better was cured by no-cost eye exercises I found on the internet.
That’s right – CURED and NO-COST.
Capitalism sucks at healthcare, i.e. maintaining and restoring health, but is great at sickcare, i.e. sickening you and maintaining you sick.
Bates method, along with natural therapies in general, is the way to better heath for the eyes and the rest of the body.