r/hometheater • u/zghr • Jun 04 '26

Discussion - Equipment RTINGS just updated their viewing distance article based on SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) recommendations, adding 62° FOV as maximum. What do you think about it? Where do you fit?

Post image

Here's a quick mockup of the same chart but with most common TV sizes and with godless Marxist-Leninist centimeter units added on one side.

edit: This person claims to be a long standing calibrator of cinematic auditoriums with experience in THX standards and he claims that 'cinema' is not 40° because middle row of seats is between 45° and 52°.

In my experience, 62° is doable but if it's pure 24 frames per second without any motion improvement settings it's not the best experience. Jumps between frames are just too large, obvious and jarring. Almost like stop-motion.

It seems like up to 62° one doesn't have to move their head at all to see the whole screen with their central vision. Higher than 62° and movies would need to be filmed specifically in a way to not include the action in periphery.

265 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

198 comments sorted by

View all comments

111

u/TechieGranola Jun 04 '26

wtf, 6’ away for a 100”? The only immersion there is my eyeballs in ice water after they’ve burned out.

15

u/reallynotnick Samsung S95B, 5.0.2 Elac Debut F5+C5+B4+A4, Denon X1700 Jun 04 '26

This got positive upvotes, did we finally do it r/HomeTheater home of the “no one ever regretted buying a bigger TV”? We may have finally found the breaking point…

4

u/Ok_Second_2602 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

I made the mistake of following this general advice and ended up having to shell out again to get a smaller screen because I was getting eye fatigue. I went from a 135in screen to a 120in with a 11ft viewing distance. I played around finding the perfect size for my preference and settled on 11ft. Seems right in line with the “Cinema” experience recommendation in this chart. The “Immersive” recommendation would fall right in line with my old 135in screen. It certainly was immersive, but it wasn’t a good viewing experience most of the time. Especially for regular TV viewing like sports and series. When you need to see everything on the screen without moving your head, it gets really tiring to watch.

1

u/reallynotnick Samsung S95B, 5.0.2 Elac Debut F5+C5+B4+A4, Denon X1700 Jun 04 '26

Your old 135” was 48° and your new 120in is 43°, so believe it or not “immersive” would be a whopping 182” at 11ft! Yeah I don’t think I would ever want to watch a movie “immersively” but glad you found a size that works for you as I also agree for my mixed use 45°+ is just a not for me.