[The Wizard]

My dad has just bought a new 40" lcd and it looks terrible because I think the tv is too big to cope with SD pictures on such a big tv. I explained that this is inherent with large lcd's because the upscale in picture adds to a drop in resolution and I think in order for it to look ok you need to be sat further away. I realise this kind of defeats the object of having a bigger tv but I think maybe there was an optimum size for certain sized rooms when viewed at certain distances.

I was wondering what the ideal or recommend size of tv was for a room approx 10' x 12' sitting about 3 to 4 meters away? I honestly think 40" is too big for viewing SD up that close unless you're watching high def. I was gonna suggest perhaps nothing bigger than a 32"
Any ideas? His old telly is 28" and I thought it was plenty big enough for how close he sits and the size of the room.

[chrisjr]

Well if you believe the calculations on this website

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/v...alculator.html

then the TV is the correct size for viewing SD at that sort of distance. And if you wanted HD it would need to be even bigger! Or you would have to sit even closer.

By the way I assume you mean metres in the viewing distance and not feet as given for the room size as that suggests he is viewing with his back up against the opposite wall to the TV? Or did you really mean 3 to 4 feet? Which does seem a tad close.

[The Wizard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisjr

Well if you believe the calculations on this website

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/v...alculator.html

then the TV is the correct size for viewing SD at that sort of distance. And if you wanted HD it would need to be even bigger! Or you would have to sit even closer.

By the way I assume you mean metres in the viewing distance and not feet as given for the room size as that suggests he is viewing with his back up against the opposite wall to the TV? Or did you really mean 3 to 4 feet? Which does seem a tad close.

Like I said. The room is 12 feet by 10 feet. I don't know what that is in meters. I just know that's how big the room is. The tv is in the corner of the room and the sofa is about 3.5 meters away approx against the opposite wall. Seems way to big to be sitting that close to be honest.

[emptybox]

Well, I've got a 40" FullHD Samsung watched from 8' away, and SD is excellent.
Mind you I spent a lot of time in the shop choosing a TV that did look good in SD.

I bought it nearly 3 years ago, and at the time I was comparing 3 different Samsung sets.

The budget one was £500 and SD on that looked pixellated and full of artifacts.

The top end one was £800 and I thought SD looked, if anything, over smoothed. To the extent where some detail seemed to be lost. Though no doubt the effects could have been turned down.

The mid-range one was £650, and that looked just right, in a Goldilocks kind of a way. So I went for that one.

Of course HD looked great on all 3 sets.

So the moral of the story is to choose the right set if you will be watching a lot of SD.

[mac2708]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wizard

Like I said. The room is 12 feet by 10 feet. I don't know what that is in meters. I just know that's how big the room is. The tv is in the corner of the room and the sofa is about 3.5 meters away approx against the opposite wall. Seems way to big to be sitting that close to be honest.

12' x10' = 3.65M x 3.08M Diagonally approx 15.5' (4.72M)

[56up]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisjr

Well if you believe the calculations on this website

If I were to take the calculation on that website for granted I'd need a 110" TV! We have a 46" set and a little judicious window shopping shows that 46" will not be near large enough for 3D, the effect will be lost. Now there was a 70" Sharp set.....

[call100]

40" TV is not really a large TV. They always look bigger when you first get them. After a very short while you will be asking if you should have gone for the next one up, as it doesn't look so bad after all.
I have a 42" in a room around that size and it's very small in the corner. The replacement will be bigger....

[mrsgrumpy49]

My goodness. I have an old CRT TV with a screen no more than 12" across. Been looking at new ones and thought I might push the boat out at 22" - I watch from about 8 foot away.
Surely it depends not just on your eyesight and where you will be sitting but room preferences. I hate the way TV has come to dominate our living spaces. If I had my way it would come disguised as a pot plant

[call100]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrsgrumpy49

My goodness. I have an old CRT TV with a screen no more than 12" across. Been looking at new ones and thought I might push the boat out at 22" - I watch from about 8 foot away.
Surely it depends not just on your eyesight and where you will be sitting but room preferences. I hate the way TV has come to dominate our living spaces. If I had my way it would come disguised as a pot plant

The only way to watch Andy Pandy!!.
Horses for courses.....Just don't buy a modern tv if you don't approve...

[pocatello]

You don't buy an sdtv for optimal viewing distance, because SD image is so course that to sit far back enough to not see its faults would be to sit an absurd distance away, or to get a ridiculously small tv, by default SD tv is a compromise. The viewing distance calculator is based on visual acuity, and it only reveals this compromise.

It just tells you that pa needs to get on with it and watch more HD channels

Furthermore it isn't as bad as you say. 40" is still a small screen, old people have bad eyes as well. I watch some sdtv on a 50" plasma and I don't see how its so bad, people accept that it is what it is, just like when you watch youtube and it isn't always pin sharp or professionally shot, so what? Most sdtv, you aren't watching that closely to begin with. If you are seeinig lcd or such artifacts that is another issue all together, or if he simply doesn't like the lcd look. Plasma can tend to look better when displaying sdtv as its more crt like in terms of picture quality, lcds flat sheen kind of emphases the lack of detail in an sd image.

Large screen fits a small room easily, as you can press or mount it to the wall. Makes viewing comfortable, and reading subtitles/closed captions easier as well...esp for old people.

[pocatello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wizard

Like I said. The room is 12 feet by 10 feet. I don't know what that is in meters. I just know that's how big the room is. The tv is in the corner of the room and the sofa is about 3.5 meters away approx against the opposite wall. Seems way to big to be sitting that close to be honest.

Its not that big at all. Buying a smaller screen is also not cost efficient, the things tend to cost more per inch the smaller you go.

I don't see how you think a 40" is huge from that distance, the wedge of your vision it takes up from 3.5 meters back is basically nothing special, you talk like he's watching imax at home, when in fact a 40" is just not big at all, 16:9 40" is only about as tall as a 32" crt of olden 4:3 days.
It is a picture of little over a foot and a half tall, standing back from a painting on the wall a mere foot and half tall and viewing it from the back of a room how can you say it is huge?

[XxBlaKOuTZxX]

I went from a 46" to a 55" screen and next time I'll go up to a 60 or 65" screen. The bigger the better imo.

[rjb101]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wizard

My dad has just bought a new 40" lcd and it looks terrible because I think the tv is too big to cope with SD pictures on such a big tv. I explained that this is inherent with large lcd's because the upscale in picture adds to a drop in resolution and I think in order for it to look ok you need to be sat further away. I realise this kind of defeats the object of having a bigger tv but I think maybe there was an optimum size for certain sized rooms when viewed at certain distances.

I was wondering what the ideal or recommend size of tv was for a room approx 10' x 12' sitting about 3 to 4 meters away? I honestly think 40" is too big for viewing SD up that close unless you're watching high def. I was gonna suggest perhaps nothing bigger than a 32"
Any ideas? His old telly is 28" and I thought it was plenty big enough for how close he sits and the size of the room.

It may look terrible because it's not set up correctly.

[The Wizard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rjb101

It may look terrible because it's not set up correctly.

No it's set up perfectly. The picture is perfect but watching it gives me a bad head for some reason. It's 100hz so shouldn't be too bad but I do notice some lateency issues especially when panning around. When the camera zooms in or pans around it makes me feel dizzy. Can't explain why.

[alanwarwic]

28" probably means 26" of it is visible if CRT so 32" is the next up and a big jump.


Seems TVs are 26" or 32" or 40" now.

[The Wizard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alanwarwic

28" probably means 26" of it is visible if CRT so 32" is the next up and a big jump.


Seems TVs are 26" or 32" or 40" now.

Funny you should say that because I measured my old widescreen crt which is a 28". It says so on the manufacturers label on the back of the tv. Yet when I measured the screen corner to corner it measured 26 inches in actual visible screen size.

[bobcar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wizard

Funny you should say that because I measured my old widescreen crt which is a 28". It says so on the manufacturers label on the back of the tv. Yet when I measured the screen corner to corner it measured 26 inches in actual visible screen size.

On CRTs they use the tube size not all of which is visible whereas on panels there is no tube so the spec is for viewable size. This means that the "same size" panel is larger than the same size CRT.

[chrisjr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wizard

Funny you should say that because I measured my old widescreen crt which is a 28". It says so on the manufacturers label on the back of the tv. Yet when I measured the screen corner to corner it measured 26 inches in actual visible screen size.

That is because on CRT displays the standard is to measure the full tube diagonal. Which is always greater than the actual picture size. Part of the tube is hidden behind the case of the TV.

With an LCD the display panel and picture size are pretty much the same.

[soulboy77]

Part of it is aesthetics. A large screen will dominate a room on the wall or sitting on a TV unit whereas previously someone may of had an old CRT TV sitting more discreetly in the corner. When I retired my CRT TV and went to a 46" LCD is seemed huge and I thought I had over done it. Now having got use to it, I regret not buying the 52" version in the first place.

[XxBlaKOuTZxX]

Yeah I was the same but you get used to the screen size quite quickly and it does seem I should have gone with a bigger screen than the 55" i got but i'll do that next time. The jump from 46" to 55" doesn't seem that much to be honest. Yeah it hangs off each side of the unit but I can live with that.

[pocatello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soulboy77

Part of it is aesthetics. A large screen will dominate a room on the wall or sitting on a TV unit whereas previously someone may of had an old CRT TV sitting more discreetly in the corner. When I retired my CRT TV and went to a 46" LCD is seemed huge and I thought I had over done it. Now having got use to it, I regret not buying the 52" version in the first place.

Lol no, any old crt was not discrete, event he smallest 20" would jut into the room a few feet, and sit on furnature using up even more space.

Tv's are so thin now and so easily wall mounted they effectively take no space at all, unless you live in a closet, the space the tv takes will not dominate at all, it blends far better into any room, like a picture frame would.

[XxBlaKOuTZxX]

Agreed. I remember when i took delivery of my old Sony 52WS4. the delivery men dumped it in the middle of the sitting room, got me to sign for it and left. I struggled to lift it up onto it's cabinet lol and when I finally did, it stuck out from the wall even though it was kind of pushed back into the corner lol it was huge !.

[1saintly]

I got a 42'' thinking it would be fine, it was for a week then was thinking should have gone BIGGER 46+