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.