Walmart had 100-bulb LED Christmas lights on sale for $6 a string. This is just around the price of non-LED strings, however these are 120v rated LEDs that run right off the mains with only a fuse to protect them. Needless to say these things are tied to the 60hz phase. Since these were being put on my tree this year, I decided to do something about it. A simple full bridge rectifier fixed most of the issue. I think now the phase on the string is more around 120hz which is much easier on the eyes.
I can still see the flicker, however it's not nearly as bad. I believe the thing that would fully rectify the issue (see what I did there) would be to throw a capacitor in the circuit to further smooth out the DC supply. Really it comes down to the idea of a diode; current flows in one direction. In an AC circuit, it flows both directions. Convert it to DC and smooth the supply out and you're using just as much energy without flicker. Of course this ends up costing more if the manufacturer were to implement, so there's that.
I really just want DC throughout the house.
There are increasingly more shops, shopping mall, or whatever places it is, and Monitor, billboard etc, especially in China or made in China where culture are more price sensitive, using cheaper LED, so they could say they are governmentally friendly. ( There are also some government incentive in doing so ). And INSANE environmental groups which forces everyone to switch to LED.
Many of these LED has flickering issues, that some people dont have a problem, some people are little annoyed but are fine with it, or some minority like me which needs to run away or I would puke or sick.*
I tired LED lighting once, it started have flickering issues two years in. It was very minor, but enough to irritate me. I have since switch back to good old light bulb.
*I have also discovered those who are sensitive to these flickering issues are also likely to be latency sensitive, as discussed in the computer IO latency and web latency.