It’s good to know the option’s there, but my last 2-row layout (Post #71) may still work. The distances recommended by calculators aren’t subjective. I’d like to find out what size screen would realistically work for all seats at the 7ft MLP viewing distance. Maybe a 96inch?
You'll want more opinions on this, but FWIW here's mine....
I sat a chair so that eyes were 7ft from 80" wide 16x9 screen and spent a couple of hours watching.
Streaming 1080p with Apple TV was just on the wrong side of acceptable. (Stranger Things Season 3) Too much noise, grain, whatever.. Streaming 4K to a pixel shifting JVC was just acceptable.
Switching to Interstellar 1080p BD was better than 4k stream and had good picture quality, but I noticed a few things that I usually won't, perhaps because I'm used to something different....
At the beginning of the movie there are interviews and they are intended to have more grain. I found the grain more distracting and I found during a closeup where the subject moved her head very distracting as it covered more "distance" within the field of view.
Some background scenery, normally not in focus for the shot tended to stand out more.
The graphics shown on the many screens in this movie which would benefit from UHD resolution anyway stood out more at 7 ft.
This movie has both 16x9 and 2.4 or 2.35 (not sure which) scenes. At 7ft I preferred the cinema wide aspect.
The planet scene where the spacecraft gets hit by the giant wave has a lot of clouds and sky that has the slightest amount of visible noise at 7 ft that I didn't notice when I moved back.
So to sum it up, at 7ft, I'd be OK watching 1080p discs in cinema-scope. I wouldn't be ok streaming 1080p. Some of the 1080p BD observations I think I'd become used to and some were so short in duration that if I wasn't critically watching for problems I may not have cared much.
Also, att 7ft I would definitely want my eyes level with the bottom 1/3rd of the screen. Eyes level to the bottom of the screen was not comfortable at all with 16x9. Reclining would probable overcome this.
A couple of times I moved back to 8ft when something was bothersome and it helped quite a bit.
And now its time for some viewing angle numbers:
- THX viewing angle recommendation 36 degrees.
- 7ft distance 80" wide 51 degrees
- 8ft distance 80" wide 45 degrees.
- 10ft distance 100" wide also 45 degrees (for reference as IIRC this is
@thrillcat 's set-up. I didn't calculate this until after watching and found it interesting that it matched the viewing angle at 8ft which I thought was pretty good with 1080p disc.
If you have access to yours or another 65" set to experiment with respect to field of view. The higher light output could be annoying though.
- 5ft distance with 65" 16x9 diag is 51 degrees.
- 5.8 ft distance with 65" 16x9 diag is 44 degrees.
- 7.3 ft distance with 65" 16x9 diag is 36 degrees THX recommendation.
Another experiment I read about somewhere, is to mark the top rim of a pair of glasses at the point where the rim intersects the edges of the screen for a known distance/viewing angle. Take the glasses to a movie theater and find the row where it matches. Watch movie.
