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55” or 65” TV Screen Size and Your Speakers: Please Join Survey

 

With my two-way speaker build on hold as the clock ticks towards December 31st when my $1200.00 in Sony card points expire, I am struggling to decide between the 55” or 65” Sony A95L OLED TV. Sitting on chairs at Best Buy, I tape measured 11 ft from the 55”, which looked small, while the 65” looked too big at the same distance.

 

My largely empty living room is 20 ft x 11, with the west side open, crossing a 4 ft wide x 27 ft hallway and into a ~ 10 ft x 9 kitchen and then 3 ft wide staircase. A triangular ceiling that peaks at 11 ft is above it all.   

 

I plan to listen 10 ft from my speakers, with the TV between them and a foot or so behind the horns.

 

I built the 65” (56.9” w x 33” h) cardboard mock and to my eyes at 12 ft the 65” “screen” looks immersive.  

 

I will build the 55” (48.25” x 27.5”) mock as soon as I can get more cardboard from the local supermarket.

 

Meanwhile, it might be very helpful to learn of the experiences of other 55” and 65” TV users.

 

How far are you from one of those screen sizes?  

 

Do you sit on a chair or recliner?

 

Please describe the speakers that you use in place of the TV’s internal speakers, and how far you sit from them.

 

 

ajant
ajant OP
86 posts
 

You may not have room for this, but I offer this recommendation because it was a wonderful solution for 2 channel main systems. AWOL makes short throw laser projections and screens specially made for this purpose.

Yes, I sure considered this but it won't fly for several reasons. My room is only 23 ft wide. The triangular ceiling peaks at 11 ft, but the south wall's s only 11 ft and then empties into a ~ 3.5 ft hallway, beyond which is a 9 ft 8 kitchen. And while my long wall might allow a screen that big, with my speakers and subs reasonably well placed, my chair would be in the hallway, In any case, with a screen that big I'd need to have even more room to use a recliner; otherwise I'd be forever craning my neck to have my eyes reasonably on axis with the screen. NOT happening in this size room. Besides, could this or any projector compete with the Sony A95L's contrast and black level range? Also, Sony just reduced prices by ~ $300. And I have $1200. in Sony card points that I have to redeem before the rewards program ends Dec, 31st. So it's got to be a Sony OLED.

ajant OP
86 posts
 

I’m barely 8’ from my 65” screen. My best tv is a 55” Oled in the bedroom. I don’t do surround sound anymore because the living room size has gotten much smaller. I miss the days of having a 20x25’ room. Those days are long gone. 
 

I wouldn’t buy anything less than a 65” screen nowadays. And is it me or the screens have gotten smaller. My 65” screen is nearly as big as today’s 75” screen. What’s up with that?

I sit about 12 ft. from our TV in a stressless chair. We had a 55 inch but went to a 65 inch. No looking back, the 65 inch is a great size and doesn’t overwhelm the room. The 65 inch would work very well. If you look at the "recommended" viewing guide charts for TV viewing they would probably say a 75 inch would be recommended depending on the content resolution.

I started with a 55” with my seating position 12’ from the screen, after a while, it began to look very small!  Switched to a 65” Sony OLED, it was much better, but it, too, began to look small!  Was contemplating an 87” but, bit the bullet when a good deal came up on a 98” and I jumped on it. So far, I’m loving the experience, still at 12’ viewing distance, and wondering how long it will take before, it too, looks small! When it comes to TV’s bigger is better. 

have an 85incher coupled with a room corrective sennheiser ambeo max and my face is about seven feet from the screen.

Every time I catch a faint whiff of heated electronics it takes me back to that experience.

My Don Sachs tube preamp driving my First Watt F4 poweramp.

Another often overlooked aspect of viewing and vision is that our peripheral (side to side) viewing is greater than our vertical (top to bottom) vision. The sense of overwhelm from large image is due to image height, and not so much image width. The older days of 4:3 aspect ratio screens, a 70" rear projection TV could be quite overwhelming, both physically and from a viewing perspective. That 70" image was 42" high, roughly equivalent to a 85" 16:9 screen today.

Here’s one more reason to go BIG:

If you watch blockbuster movies, these are (almost) always "letterbox" or 21:9 aspect ratio. This reduces the image height fairly significantly, around 60% of the full 16:9 height. So, doing the math: a 65" screen will produce an image size of approximately 57" wide by 24" high. In this case you are, literally, watching the equivalent of a 48" television. Which brings us back to the good "ole" days. Imagine that massive 35" CRT television.....

 Thanks to all for sharing your TV size experiences with me. Like I did with the 65” mock last weekend, this Saturday night I finished the 55” mock, precisely cut to 1/8” of the Sony A95L specs. I spent much of that night and today placing them in various locations and distances in the room . I’ve narrowed my chosen locations down to two.

One last question: Whether I go with the 55” or 65” I would want the screen to be between 13.5 and 14 ft from my eyes, with the TV between my floor standing speakers and the speakers 10 to 11 ft from me.

At that distance and looking at the center of the 55” mock the entire screen falls within the full viewing area of my eyes. But this isn’t so with the 65” mock. Because of this difference I wondering how my eyes would react while watching moving or even stable images on a 65” TV. Wouldn’t they be compelled to hunt across the screen a lot more than they would with the 55” screen?

Indeed, for those of you who sit between ~ 8 ft to 11 ft from a 65” or 77” screen, do find your eyes get especially tired from hunting for aspects of images while viewing a screen that big and from that distance? OTOH, everyone’s eyes must zoom around the huge screen in movie cinemas, though I haven’t been in one for many years, nor plan probably ever will again, in part for this reason.

But again, don’t you guys get some kind of eyestrain if or because your field of vision is overshot by your > 55” or > 65” screen size?

 

ajant OP
86 posts
 

A word on center channel:

Yes, center channel is the way to go. One consideration is room acoustics (or lack of them). When using 2 speakers to produce an "phantom" center channel, you have energy emitting from 2 speakers (often close to room boundaries) to produce that center channel information. With a center channel, you’ve cut the complexity of the signal (and its resultant reflections) in half. We’ve had highly reflective rooms where dialogue was unintelligible with 2 speakers, and "tolerable" when the burden of center channel info was sent to a single dedicated speaker.

From what I’ve usually heard at speaker design and home theater forums is the trouble with adding a center speaker is that unless the drivers are virtually identical to high, mid and midbass drivers in your main speakers you’ll likely end up getting discordant timbre and other unpleasant issues. It may be hard enough to “match up” drivers in a Revel, Wharfedale KEF or what have you brand center with those in the front radiating cone drivers of your mains. But what if your speakers are horn speakers like Gary’s? https://galibierdesign.com/wa-trip-01/

Or Pierre’s? See posts 15266, 15276. https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/beyond-the-ariel.100392/page-764

My new speakers will be similar to this. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQlo_4Lv16sQWCN0pxhVvvmfH83lEEFRtEbpw&s

A center similar to this one might work.               https://josephcrowe.com/products/speaker-system-no-2015-10-mtm-with-1-4-horn

But Troy Crowe won’t build it for me and I can’t DIY myself.

 

ajant OP
86 posts
 

I took my centre speaker over to two friends' who also believed a centre was not necessary, and after trying a few films with/without, they both bought a centre speaker and said it (watching a film), was a MUCH more involving experience with a more even soundstage where vocals were much better produced, and the whole film sound stage was more clearlly defined. And, as for the poster who doesn't use a pair or rears!!! Wake up man, you're missing a MASSIVE amount of film experience.

Trust me, I'd have no problems spending serious money on a center speaker.

https://www.crutchfield.com/shopsearch/center_channel_speaker.html?fa=1#&price=1370-3340

But as I just explained above, all DIY speaker builders I've consulted strongly advise not using dissimilar drivers in mains and center speakers. But are you saying from experience that YMMV that much in favor of disregarding this advice? I'd hate to have to ship a > 45lb center back to an online store. 

 

ajant OP
86 posts
 

But again, don’t you guys get some kind of eyestrain if or because your field of vision is overshot by your > 55” or > 65” screen size?

I ask this because of this supremely relevant post by Dave in Green:

THX recommends a “best seat-to-screen distance” FOV of 40 degrees. But that's based on averages where some prefer greater and some less. An FOV of 50 degrees is more like front row seating at a commercial cinema. Some people prefer that level of immersion while others don't. It would be best to experiment by viewing content with a 50 degree FOV before locking into it as it will create a lot of eye movement that could get tiring when viewing fast moving action content depending on your individual tolerance.

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/would-50-degrees-horizontal-viewing-angle-be-too-much.3006084/

Clearly, screen size vs. viewing distance is largely a matter of 1.) How visually immersed one cares to be and 2.) what kind of content one typically views. For sure, if I were a gamer and/or a big fan of “action” movies, I very likely would get eye fatigue or even headaches with a 65” screen-even at 13 ft. But save for a James Bond film now and then, I’m mostly a fan of film noir genre and other classic and new but fairly slow-moving TV shows and movies. Furthermore, I keep my living room dimly lit, at least for TV viewing, so there may therefore be less risk of eyestrain.

 

Given these facts, I’ll be ordering the 65” Sony A95L this week at Best Buy. I can always exchange it for the 55” within the 10-day trial period, but thanks to Dave in Green’s presenting of those crucial facts, after some hours viewing of various BDs from my collection there’s at least a 50% chance that the 65” will be the one.

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