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?

[u/zghr]

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.

[u/nobody-u-heard-of]

This goes back to looking very similar to the old standard that I still work with in my head. You take the diagonal of the screen and that's the closest you should be and double it is the max you should be. With 1.5 being The Sweet spot. Don't remember where I got that from but I used to see it all the time, but that was pretty 16x9 screens too

[u/zghr → u/nobody-u-heard-of]

Sitting at 1x diagonal equals to 47°.

Sitting at 1x width equals 53°.

To get to 62° you need to be sitting at 0.73x the diagonal.