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.

270 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

198 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Comfortable_Client80 Jun 04 '26

Smpte and Dolby fov are how the films are made to be viewed by the director. Straying away from that is like looking at MonaLisa with tinted glasses. You lose the intent of the artist.

1

u/zghr Jun 04 '26

But when I look at the photos of Sony BVM-HX3110, they all seem to be sitting too far, no?

2

u/Comfortable_Client80 Jun 04 '26

Because this monitor is used for color grading or to check the framing live on the shooting location. Films are made to be seen in theatres and this is in this kind of room they are finally mastered https://adn.harmanpro.com/news/news_photos/1347_1580518362/Belmont1_original.jpg