It"s ok. I will take the words of two unrelated liscened medical professionals along with my own personal experiences over a random forum poster of whom I have no recollection of ever reading before today. With the post count Lyenae has, it speaks volumes that I don"t recognise the name at all.
Of course, we are afterall, talking about the guy who recommends
Lyenae said:
I"d pickup an Ideallume backlighting kit from Cinemaquest (actually I"d pick one up for any TV). For $90 shipped, it"ll will cast 6500k light behind your TV, surrounding it in a perfect white glow. This will trick your eyes into thinking you have better black levels/contrast then you already do, and ease eyestrain.
If he knew what he was talking about in any field he pretends to be an expert at, he would have known that the Imaging Science Foundation, which is what the entire visual entertainment industry in America uses for it"s baseline, recommends shades of light blue or light green, depending on the brightness or darkness of your viewing room. Grey lighting is actually considered the best for eyestrain reduction and the only thing pure 6500k white light does is crush your black reducing shadow detail. If that"s how you decide to improve contrast levels that, then you, like Lyenae are completly clueless.
In reality, though Bias Lighting (the proper term) is a huge help for night time viewing 6500k is simply too bright, it will crush the black, reduce shadow detail, and actually increase, not decrease eyestrain. The true recommended white light temperature is much lower. Also, white light is only recommended on a black wall with a black TV set.
According to THX standards, also endorsed by the ISF, your background wall is best painted a muted dull grey color. It is then best to back light the set with a very faint and dim blue light to really bring out the finer details of your picture. In Lyenae"s defense, under the proper settings, black walls, black TV set, and zero ambient light in the room otherwise, then the particular model he suggested is appropriate. Who has black walls?
For the standard white walled room, go to Home Depot, grab a blue 3" section of ropelight, wrap it around the back of where the set meets the stand or where the set meets the mount. With this methos you can have other ambient light in the room as well as a black or silver TV set. Green light for plasma sets due to the deep dark levels and blue light for lcd set. Call your local ISF certified professional calibrator to confirm. You can find your local one here.
ISF licsened calibrators by state