Front projection or not?

1. Your recomended seating distance is based on width, not diagonal. 60" wide is 69" diagonal.

2. It's also very conservative and not even close enough to visually resolve 1080 line HD. In the absence of projection artifacts, once they adjust to a theatrical scale most people find the best trade off between immersion and noticing DVD flaws is about 1.5 widths on a 16:9 screen. This matches the subtended field of vision you get in the farthest seat from the screen in a good THX certified commercial theater. That's 80" wide or 92" diagonal. They don't sell one piece consumer televisions that big.

If you want to sit farther from the screen than you do in a small living room you need two-piece projection. If you want that to work with ambient light you need a matching rear projection screen, mirrors, space to put those in, etc.

I sit 11' from an 87x49 (100" diagonal) screen. It's a bit small for good scope transfers where 9' is a better seating distance and about right for everything else.

Wider movies (mostly 2.35 and 1.85) use the same ammount of space on lower apsect screens (16:9 or 4:3) the same width as a wider screen. Narrower ones only occupt the middle. This is a feature.

You don't want to watch 4:3 VHS tapes and wide screen DVDs at the same width.

You could sit 10' from an 8' wide screen without having to turn your head.

Most scope transfers are new movies or restored epics and would look great at that width.

You'd want to run a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen (IOW, 96 x 41") to keep DBS satellite a watchable size and for 1.85:1 movies to be a reasonable size (76 x 41").

The constant height setup would be easy to mask with curtains.

Ideally you'd use a 9" CRT projector or 16x9 digital with an anamorphic lens to get there (the later may have visible projection artifacts that push you back farther).

As far as stereo imaging, getting box out from between my speakers (4' from the front wall, 7' between a line drawn through the tweeters and the listener) did wonders for it.

The sound stage on movie tracks also comes close to matching the screen (87" wide screen, 96" between tweeters).

There are a couple of problems with 4:3 screens.

1. Source quality

Most 4:3 sources (DBS satellite, bad cable, VHS tapes) are extremely low quality. Most widescreen sources (DVD, HD) are high quality.

If you use a 4:3 screen small enough to keep the bad 4:3 sources watchable the good wide screen sources are too small. If you select the screen for the better wide screen sources the soft picture and compression artifacts from bad 4:3 sources become objectionable.

A wider screen is smaller for your bad 4:3 sources, and bigger for high quality wide screen - the best of both worlds. And the 4:3 image is still a lot bigger than an RPTV on "modest" front projection setups (81" diagonal on an 87x49" 100" diagonal 16:9 screen).

2. Space limits from the room and speaker placement

Disregarding the above if you wanted an 8' wide screen for good scope movie performance a 4:3 screen would be 6' high versus 40" for a 2.35:1 screen. You'd have a hard time getting a good center channel placement on the 4:3 screen without going to a perforated setup.