55” or 65” TV Screen Size and Your Speakers: Please Join Survey

I am not a "videophile", but, it is nice to have a bigger screen when watching concerts and music videos. 85 inch TVs is what I have.

My PC is also hooked up to it and I work on it a lot through the day (not just there for entertainment only)..helps to see things clearly from 11 ft away.

allways go big i had a 65" samsung curved screen after 2 mos it cracked and Samsung said it was physical damage by me NO was not
refused to warranty it they did this all over the world to millions of customers! the scum ! they just cracked fr stress as curved glass windshields do too
i had bought it @ wall mart and got the extra extended insurance they paid me $2 K said it was outrageous samsung refused to warranty it !
and i bought a 85" Samsung ( flat screen they stopped making curved TV screens except for small computer screens ) too bad as i liked them!
so fast forward 1 year i eas reading on Cnet forum samsung had done this all over world blamed consumers for cracks refused warranty someone said write to the BBB in NJ USA samsung headquarters make complaint i did
two weeks later got a email "oh sorry as a one time customer consideration we will fix your screen" so came to house w/ crew and big folding table /worksurface disassembled the screen replaced it and all good , all new 1 SO I GOT MY $ BACK and GOT A NEW 65" SCREEN FREE! 7+ YEARS NOW still HAVE NOT USED IT !
PLAN IS TO MAKE A CABINET ( lots of YT videos how to ! ) AND BUY ONE OF THE $150 MOTORS AND FRAMES THAT WILL RAISE THE 65" tv FR THE CABINET AT FOOT OF BED! then retract it ! .
advice ? go big ! 82’ 85"          65 or 55" is TOO SMALL! I sit 8’ fr my screen BTW
center channel is an experiment ! 

WELL , THE CURRENT STATE OF THE 11.2 CENTER CHANNEL EXPERIMENT HAS US USING:

1) A YAMAHA a MST55D powered computer speaker ( a 8:" woofer and two two way satellites ,

2) a Vandersteen VCCC1 center channel

3) a ben Q trevolo desktop electrostatic speaker ! 2 flat panels ( very clean sound ! ) and 2 passive radiators and 2 4" woofers!

AND

we have a small Yamaha 10" sub woofer ! ( for the LooooooooW HZ! LOL

all above playing together and in mono it actually sounds GOOD!

Future experiments will include trying the Allison 2 way center chanell, speaker and trying the AL105, RA labs mini monitors , the AL110 and NL654 !

ultimately we plan to repurpose a AL130 to a horizontal , re arranged driver configuration L to R W-T/M-W super center channel speaker !

that will be ONE heavily modded speaker ! might even add some 6’ or 4 " Allison Woofers and make it a 4-5 way design! w/ 8" 6" and 4 " drivers

allison NL654 I may try in center channel -like a AL110 but shorter and deeper and allison model 9 might try 2 together ,horizontal rotate tweeters mids 90deg  

OP - As everyone (except a numpty saying it's too big as you can't see all the screen at once!! How far are you watching at - 3 feet?!) has said to you, go as big as you can. You will get used to a 65" in minutes. Get a 55" and within those same minutes you'll be saying - I should have gone with the 65. GO BIG!

I use a 65" LG G4 between my Maggie 1.7i's in a 22' x 16' room, with speakers 'fireing' down the long length. There's c2' from Mag outer panel edge to the side wall, and a bit less between the inner panel edge and the TV, on the same plane. Eye to panel is c12'. The TV in the centre though, DOES affect the stereo image - the TV is on a stand and is c3' from the back (you lot, in the US, weirdly, call it the front - how can a space BEHIND the speakers be called the front?!) wall. For 'critical' listening I put a thick/heavy soft blanket, doubled up, over the TV screen, and the image has a better focus - singers/instruments are more sharply defined within the excellent sound stage the Maggies produce.

Anyone who says you don't 'need' a centre speaker, is,,, not correct! It's an ABSOLUTE necessesity. Messing up the sound stage of a film without a centre is a heresy. >60% of the mastered sound comes from the centre channel. It's there for a reason, and the reason is easily heard when doing an A/B comparison.

I took my centre speaker over to two friends' who also believed a centre was not necessary, and after trying a few films with/without, they both bought a centre speaker and said it (watching a film), was a MUCH more involving experience with a more even soundstage where vocals were much better produced, and the whole film sound stage was more clearlly defined. And, as for the poster who doesn't use a pair or rears!!! Wake up man, you're missing a MASSIVE amount of film experience.

A little science (and history) from a guy who’s been designing and installing Home Theater before the term "Home Theater" existed. We just called it "Giant Screen" back on those days. (I still have a Kloss Novabeam stored up in my loft).

There is actually science to apply to screen size vs viewing distance. The theoretical goal was to determine at what size/distance a person with 20/20 vision could not longer resolve a pixel. For 1080P resolution, this number is approximately 3x screen height. The math is pretty straightforward for standard 16:9 aspect ratio screens. The height is 50% (+/-) the diagonal. A 65" screen image would be about 32 1/2" high, placing a minimum viewing distance of around. 8’. This would produce high resolution, artifact free image from that distance. This would also "assume" a native 1080P image, or content that is of sufficient quality to be upscaled with good results. Poor quality content may lack detail or resolution, but glaring pixels (that make the image look like your viewing through chicken wire) will not be an issue. Moving forward to 4k, that minimum viewing distance is cut in half. Yes, you can sit less than 5’ away from the screen and have a nearly perfect image with quality content with a 65" screen.

Another often overlooked aspect of viewing and vision is that our peripheral (side to side) viewing is greater than our vertical (top to bottom) vision. The sense of overwhelm from large image is due to image height, and not so much image width. The older days of 4:3 aspect ratio screens, a 70" rear projection TV could be quite overwhelming, both physically and from a viewing perspective. That 70" image was 42" high, roughly equivalent to a 85" 16:9 screen today.

Here’s one more reason to go BIG:

If you watch blockbuster movies, these are (almost) always "letterbox" or 21:9 aspect ratio. This reduces the image height fairly significantly, around 60% of the full 16:9 height. So, doing the math: a 65" screen will produce an image size of approximately 57" wide by 24" high. In this case you are, literally, watching the equivalent of a 48" television. Which brings us back to the good "ole" days. Imagine that massive 35" CRT television that you just bought for the family’s enjoyment. After setting up and testing that set on full-screen broadcast, you quickly reach in your Laserdisc library for a "correct" (not panned an scanned) version of your favorite movie, and .... huh??!! That beautiful new 35" set is displaying a 12" (YES, TWELVE INCH!!) high image. A bit underwhelming, to say the least.

A word on center channel:

Yes, center channel is the way to go. One consideration is room acoustics (or lack of them). When using 2 speakers to produce an "phantom" center channel, you have energy emitting from 2 speakers (often close to room boundaries) to produce that center channel information. With a center channel, you’ve cut the complexity of the signal (and its resultant reflections) in half. We’ve had highly reflective rooms where dialogue was unintelligible with 2 speakers, and "tolerable" when the burden of center channel info was sent to a single dedicated speaker.