The optimum TV screen size is directly related to the available viewing distance but there are other factors as well that need to be taken into consideration.
Viewing Distance: Is it just a matter of personal preference?
Sit too close to your big screen TV and you will be able to see the image build-up structure - scanning lines or pixels forming the image thus distracting your attention and spoiling your home theater experience. Yet, sit too far away, and the impact will be lost.
There are differing opinions on the best way to determine the optimum TV viewing distance for a specific screen size. Just go to the movie theater and you will soon
...To this extent if a TV has a vertical resolution of at least 720 lines then it is classed as an HDTV. Another measure of the picture resolution is the horizontal resolution. This is the number of lines going from ...
The truth is that there are no scientific rules her. This does not mean that there aren’t any guidelines that you should follow when planning a big screen purchase or a would-be home theater room.
SMPTE Recommendations and the THX Certification standards:
The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommends that the screen size for home theater use should occupy a 30 degrees field of view
...not that much 1080p media to play on your 1080p tv, even if that were true, there will be much much more 1080p media to watch in the near future.... most of which is already here on HD DVD and ...
This 30-degrees viewing angle seems to have been accepted by many as the standard in home theater and motion picture viewing.
This SMPTE guideline is also in line with the THX certification standards in that these recommend that the back row of seats should have at least a 26 degrees viewing angle and while recommending an optimum viewing angle of 36 degrees.
It is believed that within these viewing angle limits, the viewer will get better immersed into the action movie itself.
Vision System limitations:
There is also
...the basics of a standard DVD player is the first step. When it comes to a standard DVD player they record at what is known as 480i. This allows the standard DVD player to still be compatible with older televisions ...
Technically speaking, visual acuity is a measure of the eye spatial resolving power and indicates the angular size of the smallest detail that a person visual system can resolve. A person with 20/20 (or 6/6 when expressed in meters) normal vision can resolve a spatial pattern separated by a visual angle of one minute of arc angle i.e. 1/60th of a degree, at the eye when viewed at 20 feet away. Expressed differently, a person with normal 20/20 vision is capable of identifying an object
...image that is orders of magnitude brighter than the projection TVs of old. TVs continue to improve every year, making leaps in every image quality measurement. According to the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association), over 12 million digital TVs were sold ...
In terms of TV viewing distances, these represent the point beyond which some of the picture detail will no longer be resolved by the viewer vision system.
So How Does All This Translate In Practical Terms?
A few rules-of-thumb can help put in practice the guidelines detailed above. These rules for viewing distance refer to the screen width rather than the screen diagonal and therefore apply to both 4:3 and 16:9 display formats.
A general rule for the TV viewing distance based on the SMPTE and visual acuity guidelines, is that the nearest TV viewing distance between you and your big screen TV should be limited to approximately twice the screen
...Picture on an HDTV is made up of 1,080 lines and just under 2,000 pixels that are laced together with the other lines. This means that when you multiply them together there are over 2,000,000 pixels on a HDTV and ...
This rule of thumb should give you a fairly good approximation for your TV viewing distance. It does not necessarily represent the ideal home theater viewing distance but rather the limits within which your TV viewing distance should theoretically be out of the trouble zone.
In other words, move closer than twice the screen width size, and the picture scanning lines, pixels and any other video artifacts will become too visibly intrusive - leading to distractions that will spoil your movie watching experience. Move further away than 5 times the screen
...on a chip for under $200.00. Just about every TV and projector you can buy takes progressive scan video. Indeed, digital TVs and home theater projectors will convert video to progressive scan, because they require progressive scan video at the ...
But
It is also important to realize that these maximum and minimum viewing distances should be seen in the light of the video signal definition.
A fully resolved high definition TV (1080i, 1920×1080) supports a closer viewing distance than standard analog TV. Thus while twice the screen width would be the ideal TV viewing distance for a HDTV display, it would be a bit too close for standard TV; in the later case, a three times the screen width would be a better option.
Similarly, the five times the screen width as the maximum view distance, while more than adequate for a standard
...LCD counter part due to LCD backlight leakage but this is getting better with each new generation of LCD display.Plasmas have a wider viewing angle then LCD. Older LCD screens tended to blur fast moving images newer LCD do not ...
These rules-of-thumb work best with big screen TV sizes in the range 42-inches and over.
When it comes to the use of regular-size standard definition analog TVs in the home theater, i.e. up to 36 / 40 diagonal, the optimum viewing distance range is between 8 feet and 12 feet. TV sets smaller than 36-inches aren’t big enough to qualify for Home Theater use; their smaller screen size will not provide
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Vertical Angle of View & Screen Height:
For optimum viewing, the eyes of the viewer should be level with the center of the screen.
Maximum vertical angle of view: In those home theater set-ups where this is not possible, the SMPTE guidelines suggest that the maximum vertical angle measured at the seated eye height from the front row center seat to the top most part of the projected image should not exceed 35 degrees.
This does not represent the optimum viewing angle but rather the limit beyond which the viewer will be subject to an increased neck strain.
This maximum vertical angle limit is always measured from the front row as this represent the
...televisions display. The images we see on a television are made up of horizontal lines. These lines are scanned continuously to form an image. The standard television typically has 480 lines. In comparison, HDTV can contain 1080 lines. Unlike standard ...
Minimum angle of vision: While there do not appear to be any specific SMPTE or THX guidelines in this respect, yet studies have shown that if the screen size occupies less than 15 degrees of the viewer’s vertical field of view, than that image appears small.
Practical Considerations:
In a typical home theater set-up, you do not need to really worry about neither the maximum vertical angle of view, nor about the minimum vertical angle of vision for an effective movie theater experience.
If one were to adhere to the recommended TV viewing distance of twice the screen width (as further detailed above based on the SMPTE guideline of 30 degrees horizontal field of vision), you
...the overall color. Until recent years, the Plasma was the only real large TV format available apart from the back projector type TVs. Then, suddenly LCD screens appeared everywhere and started competing within the market. Because it was the newer ...
Further more, in a typical home theater setup, it would be very difficult to exceed the maximum vertical angle of view beyond which you will be subject to an increased neck strain.
Taking into account that most home theater rooms are approximately 10 feet (3m) high, the resultant vertical viewing angle is normal well within the maximum of 35 degrees detailed in the SMPTE guidelines all you have to do is just remain within the twice the screen width guideline
...on the screen. Picture resolution and scanning are neatly summed up by numbers like 1080i and 1080p. We will discuss what these numbers mean, some other types of picture types available and the difference between 1080i and 1080p. The 1080 ...
Andrew Ghigo A Telecoms/Electronics engineer by profession, with specialization in digital switching and telecoms fraud management systems.
Editor and publisher of http://www.practical-home-theater-guide.com - a site dedicated to all home theater enthusiasts with the scope of serving as a comprehensive home theater guide to home theater systems, product reviews and home theater design.
This article is an excerpt from a series of articles appearing under the [http://www.practical-home-theater-guide.com/Home-Theater-design.html]home theater design section of the site.