My story - Modern tvs make me sick but most other screens don't.

RecentlyDeceased666

I can't figure out why at 39 I'm suddenly sensitive to screens.

Walking through tv stores the screens don't affect. I had a very early Led 3d LG tv that I had for roughly 16+ years. Could watch it 24 hours now problems, it has pwm flicker no issues or strain from viewing.

Never got sick from a screen at friends, movies, hotels, air bnb. My LG tv died so I bought a flicker free TCL 4k, after 15 mins I felt ill. After a day I suddenly became light sensitive and constantly nauseous. It lasted a week, even my xbox controller light was hurting me even if I wasn't watching tv etc

After a long fight with the store they took it back. I thought maybe it's VA panels because my whole life by luck all my monitors and tvs were ips.

Bought a LG Qned81 nano ips, didn't make me immediately sick but after 1 hour of watching the room started spinning and I nearly puked. Didn't think it was the nano ips as I have a LG 34gn850-b monjtor which doesn't give me any strain, besides the first week where I had to adjust to the brightness.

Thinking it was pwm i got a Sony bravia 3 as I heard they were pwm free at any brightness. I almost threw up just setting up the tv which had a black background with white text. Hit me in 10 seconds.

Out of desperation I bought a old 2016 panasonic that made me ill as well.

My symptoms will usually start as something like a stress yawn, ill feel my heart speed up and then I usually yawn or have to take a deep breathe. I get a migraine and my eyes start to hurt with dryness (eye drops don't help) symptoms I've never had in my life before, I can look at my S22 ultra and S23 ultra all day long no problem. I use to be a control room operator and sat in front of 9 giant tvs, they may have been plasma or lcd. I believe my eyes don't like Va panels as the crushing blacks make me feel like I'm looking through a casm as I'm trying to see the bottom of a hole. But lgs new ips tvs hurt me as well, once I stop watching TV my eyes dart left and right for some time, I feel drunk and sometimes get vertigo I then become extremly light sensitive, can't even walk through the mall without being blinded after bad tv exposure. Street lights at night don't phase me unless I've watched a bad tv then they end up really hurting me.

Eyes are only minorly impaired they didn't even want to give me glasses, they said it was not needed. Slight astigmatism which I got glasses helping to fix my tv issues. That didn't help. Eye floaters and I have autism. Idk if that could have anything to do with visual processing its just funny how nearly 40 years no issues until now.

Had covid 3x

Might try a matte finish tv as all the replacements have been shiny.

Anyone have any success with modern tvs? Even if I use eye care mode it's still bad.

miripump

RecentlyDeceased666

try looking at a tv thru a mirror, does it help?

also wide horizontal viewing angle can be an issue if phone ok cause same tech

simplex

does eye pressure increase when viewing "bad" screens?

RecentlyDeceased666

simplex um I'm not sure mate. They mostly start going dry and painful. Eye drops doesn't help ill still get the headaches and eyestrain.

simplex

RecentlyDeceased666 Eye drops doesn't help

I found blue light is main issue in my case, all IPS/VA/TN based on blue chips (to reproduce green/red peak)

All types of flickering (PWM, FRC, dithering) only increase blue-spectrum sensitivity

Try to reduce LED (screens, lamps) devices around you. "The LED strain us"

RecentlyDeceased666

simplex but before buying a modern tv no lights, lamps or phones bothered me.

Even when i reduce screen time within 30 seconds of turning on a moder TV I get sick.

So my question is since my last tv was led what has changed in the production process 🤔

simplex

RecentlyDeceased666 what has changed

Your nerve sensitivity changed 🙂 adaptation for new LED spectrum + flickering no more exists ( not noticable for people with "typical" nerve sensitivity )

RecentlyDeceased666

simplex but I have a LG 34gn850-b gaming monitor that is only a couple years old and it doesn't bother me.

What does it do right that tvs don't? Could a tv work if I set it to game mode?

AshX

I believe I commented on your Reddit post. As OP indicated on Reddit, his issues began after a COVID infection. I’m 32 and when I got COVID in 2022 at age 29, I started to be sensitive to flicker. I got re-infected this past summer and it made things worse.

I know some folks don’t went to talk about it, but a lot of us with long COVID have issues with screens and lights. If what you commented on Reddit was accurate, OP, then that’s why suddenly you’re having issues.

As to how to resolve it, well, it depends on if what’s wrong is something like binocular vision dysfunction which some long haulers developed. I believe there are exercises you can do to improve that.

Otherwise, as with myself, I’m trying to narrow down what exactly is triggering things for me, and to find a computer screen that is usable.

RecentlyDeceased666

AshX Covid still doesn't explain why my two old tvs are so easy on my eyes.

I also may have discovered a Yureka moment. My lounge room tv that I generally don't watch because it makes me ill I looked into Color gamut because my LG 34gn850-b ultra wide gaming monitor has never caused me issues and it's only 2 years old.

So looking into what that monitor does got me looking into Color gamut, my monitor is a 8 bit panel, my old good tv was a 8 bit panel. I randomly bought a 2nd hand tv from 2016 it made me sick but it's 8 bit panel, which led me to check what my nvidia shield which is connected to the 2016 tv was set to. The 2016 tv didn't have an option for color gamut but the shield did.

I set the shield to RGB but still got sick, I was confused because my gaming monitor is sRGB 8 bit. I googled all the gamuts the shield has and discovered yuv 8 bit 709. It has less colors than RGB. I've now watched the tv in a dark room for 1 hour and I feel nothing, usually I have dry eyes in 10 mins. I've also set my lounge room tv to a 8 bit gamut because the panel is only 8 bit and I just finished watching a 2 hour movie and I feel nothing, no eye pain, no nausea, no headache.

I don't know if I'm right with this but either I'm sensitive to extreme colour range hence why very old tvs didn't hurt me or these 8 bit panels have temporal dithering where colors flash super fast to display extra tones of colors that the panel can't reach natively

AshX

RecentlyDeceased666

RecentlyDeceased666 Covid still doesn't explain why my two old tvs are so easy on my eyes.

When I got COVID in 2022 my Plasma TV from 2012 was fine. It has PWM. My 2019 iMac was not fine until I used SwitchResX to force it into 8-bit mode. Then it was tolerable again until I got reinfected in 2024.

The issue is COVID, because COVID crosses the blood-brain barrier. Take a look on the long COVID subreddits. Lots of folks with the exact same experience.

So why is your old tech fine? The same reason my TV was fine: there’s something about newer screens that we have become sensitized to post-infection. For some it’s PWM, dithering, polarization, blue light - probably a combination of all of the above. It doesn’t mean we didn’t have issues pre-COVID, it just means as I saw someone describe it, we probably had a higher tolerance and wrote it off as “using the computer too much” or “blue light.”

I think for many it can also be a matter of software and hardware increasing whatever elements we find irritating, so it doesn’t necessarily mean COVID or another infection is always the trigger. All I can tell you is that in my case, I could tolerate MiniLED, strobing lights, and Apple tech prior to getting sick. I do remember finding the iMac Pro in 2017 uncomfortable, and I now know that computer had PWM, but I could use it.

I’m just throwing this out there because of how suddenly your issues appeared. It was the same for me. That being said, at this point the only thing we can do is find specific pieces of tech that work for us, and use software tools like Stillcolor and BetterDisplay to hopefully deal with the software triggers on computers. I, too, can’t tolerate modern TV’s.