Distance/Screen SIze Formula?

lel_11932@yahoo.com,

I have seen formulas for screen size referenced in postings at www.avsforum.com. I take these as guidelines rather than gospel.

In my own case, I want an immersive, theater experience in my HT. I sit about 11' away from my TV and am in the process of replacing a 61" TV with a 71" set. The 61" set looked really big when I first got it, but over time it shrank! Figuratively speaking of course, but I found that I got used to the 61" screen size and eventually wanted a larger TV.

I haven't set up the 71" set yet (it just arrived yesterday), but in no way did I feel the 61" set viewed at 11' was anything like the first 2 rows of a theater. For one thing, I look directly at the screen, I don't look up like in a theater.

As an aside, I have a 50" HDTV in the bedroom. When we're lying in bed and watching the set, we're about 12' - 13' away. I find the 50" screen size more than adequate in that situation, because in the bedroom we're watching TV versus immersing ourselves in a HT audio / video environment.

Bruce

I have seen several guidelines. The SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) suggests HT installations should have a 30-degree viewing angle, but that is based on horizontal width. THX recommends 36 degrees. At 12' viewing distance, 30 degrees suggests a screen size of 88" on the diagonal. At THX recommended levels, your only choice on flat panel displays would be the new Panasonic 103" (which requires "permission" from Panasonic - they send a team of people to your site to check whether you can order it; if they say yes, you can special order one (for $50k+)). I saw one about a week ago. It's beautiful, but I decided to pass :^).

Based on those suggestions, a 60" would not be "too big." This matches my experience. The viewing angle is probably "fine", and keep in mind that if you have normal (20/20) vision, newer full-HD screens will naturally mean that you can be "closer" to your screen than non-HD screens because of the fineness of the pixels.

most of the people on AVS forum seem to recommend the seating distance to be 1.5x the screen width (not diagonal I believe)..however I have read that people have elected distances as short as 1.1-1.2x sw.

maybe you should head to an AV store...move a chair front to back while viewing a large screen display and see what distance you feel most comfortable with.

60" will be fine. SMPTE recommends 88" - this, IMHO, is WAY too big. Stick with the 60" screen and you'll be quite happy..

-RW-

I feel that some of the new distance calculations especially THX is more marketing then common sense, sure you dont have to be far from the monitor to not see the pixels as in old technology, but some of the ratios would seem a bit too much screen for alot of veiwers, in the end I think they could be doing alot of folks a dis-service by aiming them at super huge displays and sitting pretty close to the picture.....they just want to sell the biggest display possible, not the RIGHT one. Going all out for a dedicated theater and enjoying its larger then life experience is one thing, but a housewife doesnt need or really want to be 6ft away from a 65in screen with Rosie O'donnell at 10am in the morning (not that there is anything wrong with that) :)