Home Theater Hacks

Hack #19. Backlight Your TV

Watching a large TV in a dark room can cause a lot of eyestrain. By placing a simple light behind your TV, you create the illusion of depth, resulting in less eyestrain and a more pleasant viewing experience.

I know you've been there—you're five hours into a Lord of the Rings marathon (watching the extended versions of each movie, of course), and your head begins to hurt. Your eyes get tired, and you can't understand what it is about those Uruk-Hai that make you tired. Well, it's not the movie; it's the lack of lighting in the room. More specifically, it's the lack of depth perception that the darkened room is causing.

When lights get dim, your television begins to "fade" into the back wall. Eventually, as lights go almost out (the optimal viewing environment), your eyes can no longer separate the picture on your screen from the wall behind it—but these two objects aren't the same distance away. If you're still unclear as to what I'm talking about, think about a camera trying to focus in on two objects, different distances away. Just as you seem to focus in on one object, the other starts to grow blurry. This is what's happening to your eyes in a darkened room—and eventually, it's going to begin to hurt. Your eyes need some way of distinguishing between the wall and the picture, which allows them to focus on just the picture, reducing eyestrain.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to backlight your television. Key to determining what light to ...