Potential problems (1 Viewer)

[Dave Getson]

Hi everyone,

I need your expert opinions. I will be moving in April into my girlfriend's condo with her. She has allowed me to use one of the two bedrooms as my home theatre room. The only problem is the size of the bedroom. It's about 14x10. I'd like to put my tv at one end of the 14' (under the window) and my couch at the other end (by the door and closet). the only problem is, I think my couch my be too long to squeeze into the 10' space. It would fit, but how much room would it really give me to walk by it. That's only one problem. My other delema is where to put my equipment. I have a 36" tv, 10" sub, equipment rack and Mirage OM-7 speakers in the front. I don't know if I can fit them into the 10' wide area. If I can't fit that all in, I MIGHT be able to put the rack in the closet behind the couch. A lot of this is going to have to be a trial and error thing when I move in. If, for some reason, I can't fit it all that way, do you think I'd be too close to the tv if I put everything against the long wall, giving me about 8' from me to the tv. Man, that seems really close. I'm scared. Sorry the link to my stuff doesn't work right now. I'll put it all back up very soon.

 

[SteveLeach]

Viewing distance to the screen is a question that I have wrestled with many times. From the Net I've seen recommendations like, your viewing distance should be no closer than 3x (or 2x or 1.5x) the diagonal measurement of your screen. You could try dragging your couch to these distances and see what you like, before you move in.

Then I ran into these equations for projection screens:
ViewingDistance = ((ScreenWidth/2)/.2679) = 30 degree viewing angle per SMPTE recommendations
ViewingDistance = ((ScreenWidth/2)/.3249) = 36 degree viewing angle per THX recommendations

I'm guessing a screen width of 28 inches for a 36inch TV. So 28 divided by 2 = 14, and 14 divided by .2679 = 52 inches, divided by 12 to convert to feet and you get 4.3 feet to achieve the SMPTE recommended 30 degree viewing distance. To me this would be way to close, but it gives you an idea of what the minimum distance could be.

Hope this helps

steve