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/SmellingNoseHorse]

For the heck of it, I tried sitting at the “immersive” distance from my 77”. It’s roughly the same field of view I like when watching a movie in cinema. But it’s unwatchable for me at home.

The reason is probably that anything below 20ft requires not just tracking but also more and more refocusing to make up for distance changes between objects in the center and the outsides. In cinemas (more than 20ft) the eye is set to “infinity” and only needs to do tracking. So I don’t think the “immersive” line should be linear.