Pre-recorded movies, "home theater," and more recently HDTV, have elevated the significance of television above that of just another casual electronic appliance in the home, like a radio, telephone, intercom, etc. Entire rooms are being dedicated to its use and residential architects feature such spaces as a standard element in better home designs. Consumers and professionals in formerly unrelated industries are becoming more aware of principles established decades ago by TV experts. Television engineers and post production technicians have long recognized that room conditions can have a profound effect upon image quality and viewing comfort. Whole families now perform critical viewing of electronic displays, over extended periods of time, while watching movies and playing higher-resolution video games.
The pursuit of "high fidelity" in audio reproduction is now equally applicable when talking about video image quality in the home. HDTV has brought the word "realism" more frequently into conversations about television pictures. Just as poor equipment placement and room acoustics can diminish the performance of any music system, conflicting room conditions can compromise the optimum enjoyment of video displays. Better pictures and enhanced viewing comfort are the benefits of understanding the integral role the viewing environment plays.
The topic of "the ideal viewing environment" first became presented to consumers in the ground-breaking laserdisc titled, 'A Video Standard,' by Joe Kane Productions. That first video program, designed to help consumers understand how to get the best picture and sound from their home entertainment equipment, has been followed by many others. Viewing environment principles have been addressed on them all, with room lighting the most common element. All have included a test pattern for setting the proper amount of backlighting behind a television. Not all have explained the significance of this feature.
There are many other elements of a viewing environment to consider besides ambient lighting. These can include: screen size/viewing distance, viewing angles from seating locations, the color and shade of walls/ceiling/floor, distracting reflections from objects near the screen, etc.
I'll list a growing number of links here for those HDTV fans interested in understanding better how to optimize their viewing environments:
http://www.videoessentials.com/ve_l_history.htm
http://www.cinemaquestinc.com/ideal_viewing.htm
viewtopic.php?t=3213
http://www.electronichouse.com/default.asp?NodeId=1785
http://db.widescreenreview.com/archive/ ... html&-view
http://www.cybertheater.com/Tech_Report ... light.html
http://www.hometheatermag.com/bootcamp/163/
http://www.poynton.com/notes/reducing_eyestrain/
Best regards and beautiful pictures,
Alan Brown, President
CinemaQuest, Inc.
www.cinemaquestinc.com
"Advancing the art and science of electronic imaging"