DON'T GET IT ...screen too large = eye strain???

I've never heard of eye strain from excessive muscular use. There must be an optometrist somewhere here in Audiogon with an opinion on this.

I find that an excessively large screen relative to your sitting position is not enjoyable because you can't take it all in, so to speak. You can't see the forest for the trees. I guess the audio equivalent would be to eliminate an instrument or two from the original music during mixing. Or use a tone control and turn the treble or bass all the way up or down so that some instruments essentially disappear or are masked. You can hear some of the instruments, but not all of them.

I read that article with interest as well. I think the author was trying to put into layman's terms the concept of "how big is big enough" for front projector systems. Personally, I feel the answer is "it depends" - on many variables, including personal preference, which he alluded to in his article, but more importantly I think the choice of projector plays a crucial role in answering "how big"? the screen should be.

I have an Optoma H31, which is "only" a 480p DLP projector. Through research at projectorcentral.com and other reviews, I learned that for this model you need to sit back at least 1.75x the screen width for all pixellation and screendoor effect to disappear, so I based my decision to use a 92" diagonal 16x9 screen and it works great in my theater. At that screen size and sitting back about 12-13' it results in a seamless image that is truly compelling and you still get "3 1/2 fists" of immersion (hold you fist at arm's length and count how many widths you get across the screen) If you move up to 8 or 9', you the image is still watchable but it starts to look a little grainy. However, at the correct distance, in a darkened room, it looks like a giant plasma screen due to the excellent contrast ratio and deep black capability of the H31.

With the advent of 1080P projectors at real-world prices where pixelezation is much less of an issue, I suppose it's possible to sit "too close" where eyestrain could be an issue watching a feature length movie. I once sat too close to an IMAX movie screen and got a headache after 20 minutes -jz

i have a 110" screen and sit 11' from it and after two years, i've never had eye-strain (that i know of)...althought after a few beers it may be eye strain..lol

I dont think bigger is always better, while I could go larger with my projector I run 90' and sit 10ft away, there is such a thing as too much IMO and the entire crowd that believes in buying the largest you can possibly do and afford is (in another of my opinions) driven by the needs of retail sales, not always whats best for any given consumer.