Eye irritation caused by watching HDTV

HI:

Just purchased a 42 in plasma hdtv that is set up in my living room
approximately 8 ft from sitting areas. When watching tv for more than
1 hour , i get a some type of eye irritation/inflamation. My wife also
says watching tv hurts her eyes (even though we could watch hours of
analog tv without any of those symptoms).
Have any of you experienced any of those symptoms or is it the tv?

 

it could be that you don't blink as often as you did when watching your old
tv. Try to consiously blink more often.

SF

 

describe the physical symptoms please. how does the irritation feel?
does your eye water?, etc.

i suggest its dry eye caused by insufficient blinking. it happens when
a person is very attentive to a task. under such conditions your blink
rate goes down to about half of normal and allows the ocular surface to
become dry in areas. try using artificial tear supplements like
Systane or Refresh Plus and see if it gets better.

 

It felt like I had pink eye, burning sensation but without the yellow
mucus. the bottom of both my eyes are itchy. I went to the optician
and he prescribed some tobradex and systane as well as removing my
contacts for 1 week and the irritation went down to 0 (it was really
bad , with bright sun realy hurting the eyes). Last night , I watched
the game and again the irritation appeared. ( as i mentioned I can
watch hours of tv on my old analog tv without any symptoms).
I did not use the drops yesterday however.

But could Plasma TVs cause this eye irritation in which case I am
considering returning it or is it due to something else

 

To get to the TV end of this, you might try posting here and see if
anyone has had or knows of this kind of problem:
rec.video
sci.electronics.misc
Also, this is pretty much of a stretch:
http://www.safetyline.wa.gov.au/pagebin/mechhazd0015.htm
but you might try searching something like:
plasma tv "eye irritation"
and then changing the parameters a bit, (e.g. "eye strain)to see if
you come up with anything
HTH
Roy
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime