Why the obsession with big screens? Surely you get worse definition? (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

Exactly.

Bring over your ~60 dpi 32"-40" set to my place, put it beside my ~40 dpi (or whatever) 60" 1080p SXRD and view it from my viewing distance of 10.5-11.0 feet and let's see which picture is better. It will have nothing to do with "wow factor" of the increased screen size. At that viewing distance, no one but eagles, the best marksmen, and Chuck Norris will be able to discern the dpi difference. I'm not any of those three.

Of course if we were to move my couch up to 4-5' away, you might have an argument (or you might not, I haven't checked to see how my set looks from 4' away).

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Andrew, the eye's acuity does not naturally decline at distance. I know farsighted people who can't read a line of text 2 feet from their face, but they can see distances fine. Given an equal acuity (and corrected vision should not rapidly degrade at the distances we are talking), it has nothing to do with the "psychophysical", and everything to do with physics, specifically a little tome called Optiks. You might have heard of it, since it was written by a Brit. Sir Something-or-other.

Speaking of acuity, it may help to look at it this way. Take the Big 'E' on an eyechart. Now take another 'E' half that size. Put the big 'E' at 20 feet and the little one at 10 feet. Can we really say the little 'E' has "more detail" than the big one? Given average eyesight, is one easier to read? Now put about a million of those 'E's together, shape 'em like rectangles and give em some color and brightness. Now you got a couple TV screens. Is one "more detailed?"

 

[ToEhrIsHuman]

to the OP:

yeah...you're absolutely right. it makes absolutely no sense. i mean, shame on David Lean shooting 'Lawrence of Arabia' in Super Panavision 70 when obviously Super 8 would have sufficed. i want my 10" TV screen dagnabit - i won't be able to see anything, but it will be crystal clear!

 

[troy evans]

Actually guys it's not even this complicated. 10" to 100" it makes no difference. The image won't be any clearer on a small screen than a big one, period. As others have stated, it's in the eyes and distance. If you take a white wall and paint a 10" red ball cirle spot on it and then, paint 100" version of the exact same thing, you would swear the smaller one was more dark and rich in color. It's perception that seems to be at play here rather than actual facts. Perceptions vary quite a bit.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Andrew, your own BBC published a paper that determined human visual acuity to be 1.054 minutes of arc.

If the average viewer wants to see every last bit of detail on the screen.

1920 pixels must occupy at least 33.73 degrees of arc.
1280 pixels must occupy at least 22.49 degrees of arc.
720 pixels must occupy at least 12.7 degrees of arc.


The BBC had previously determined that the average viewing distance in British living rooms was 2.8 metres. (110 inches)

Given that constraint, it was determined that PAL was suitable for screen sizes up to 27.5 inches diagonal, 720p for screen sizes up to 50 inches, and 1080i for larger screens. Because the British were too set in their ways to rearrange their living rooms, and too stingy to buy sets over 42 inches, it was concluded that 720p was perfectly adequate.

BTW, I believe the formula is

sqrt(337)/16*viewing_distance*tan(horizontal_pixels*1.054/60/2)*2

 

[andrew markworthy]

Most amusing, old chap. The reason we don't have larger sets:

(1) the Brits (and Europeans in general) live in smaller houses - the land is way more densely populated, necessitating smaller properties. So a big TV set in most cases looks disproportionately big in a typical room.

(2) there's a social class thing that is very hard for Americans to grasp (and that is not meant as a nasty comment, even though it sounds like it - in fact it's more an anti-Brit statement than anything else). However, what a middle class Brit never *ever* wants to be accused of is being nouveau riche, and large TV sets are considered rather naff, to use the Brit term. I'm not that well attuned to US culture to grasp the subtle nuances, but I would guess an American equivalent of naff would be those pictures of dogs playing pool or an Elvis Presley clock. Perversely enough, in Brit houses, the greater the pretensions to grandeur, the smaller the TV tends to be. A too large TV supposedly indicates an unhealthy interest in TV at the expense of live theatre, the opera, reading, etc. And before you say anything, no, I don't understand it either (and I have maybe ten times more books than DVDs). But then I'm a quarter South African, a quarter Australian, and the rest of the family is from the Celtic Fringe.

 

[John H Ross]

This is absolutely true. I might be over-generalising here but Americans do tend to live in FAR bigger spaces than we Brits - sprawling apartments or expansive living spaces that REQUIRE a large screen merely to provide "adequate" proportional viewing.

Here in Blighty we treat TV as part of our lives rather than the centre of it. I have a 28" CRT widescreen, a full size 5.1 speaker system (with floor standing main speakers) and an equipment rack consisting of DVD, receiver, laserdisc, HDD recorder, VHS, Satellite box, etc. All of that, if stacked together would take up a full quarter of my living room! I'm probably getting a bigger and better SD picture in my living space than a lot of Americans get with HD picture in their proportionately bigger living space!

When I finally "upgrade" (alledgedly) to flat screen I would quite like to try a 32" display but anything above that would only serve to make my laserdiscs, VHS tapes, non-anamorphic DVD transfers and old BBC stuff look even worse than they do now. Is it really worth making the original non-anamorphic Star Wars look even worse just so that I can watch crap like Underworld: Evolution on a bigger screen? Probably not... Plus a 100"+ screen would just look very, very silly!

In one respect I do think that this obsession with BIG screens is a perfect example of "boys and their toys". But in another I agree they are one side-effect of the lifestyle chasm that exists between the US and UK (Europe).

 

[Michael Reuben]

I know people like that. Some of them are close friends. It's a tiny subculture that you'll find mostly in in big cities in the Northeast. My friends of that description find me a curiosity, because I regularly attend the theater, hold advanced degrees in literature and support art museums -- and yet I'm always running off to some popcorn flick or buying the latest DVD. I tell them it's time they left the 19th century.

M.

 

[JeremyErwin]

My parents live in england. Their semi-detached isn't large by US standards, but could be described as cozy. Given that they haggled themselves out of a license fee, a larger screen could well provoke embarrassing (and expensive) questions. I believe that it's in a third floor bedroom, out of sight.

The 2.8 metre viewing distance suggests that british living rooms are large enough to hold a larger television, especially a thinner model.

The original point of HDTV was that it was supposed to occupy more of the viewer's field of vision. Certainly goes up against the "television isn't posh" sensibility.

(On, the other hand, I have a 27 inch HDTV because it fit my price bracket. And my nose is not pressed up against the screen. It is is closer than 2.8 meters, though)

Incidentally, I've heard that the BBC uses 1080i now. So much for studies.

 

[Alex Yang]

Eh? I think a lot of your candy is over-rated and you'll never convince most Brits that your beer is a match for a pint of warm bitter, but that's as deep as my anti-US consumerism opinions go.



No - the '1080' refers to the number of lines and the 'p' to the fact it's a progressive scan. It says nothing about the number of pixels in each line. Hence the pixels per inch measure. Suppose you had a fence 100 yards long. You could have fence posts every yard or every 10 yards - the fence would be the same length, but the density of the posts would be greater in the former instance.

Andrew,

Good analogy of with the fence and the posts but you didn't take into account "scaling". When you have a bigger fence (PLASMA/LCD) the posts will be thicker and larger than that of the smaller fence (CRT/TV). If the same physical dimension pixels/lines were used in both HD SETS and CRTs your argument would have merit, but as such the PIXELS/LINES are scaled to fit the medium so the loss or the theoretical loss of resolution/definition has no merit.

Think in terms of FLAT panel displays for the COMPUTERS the larger the display don't lose resolution at all despite their larger size...

-Alex

 

[JeremyErwin]

Hold on a moment-- analogue TV is obsolete. The digital transmission schemes used by ATSC, DVB-T, and HDMI envision a fixed pixel array.

For 720p it's 720*1280. For 1080p, it's 1080*1920. (technically 1088*1920, but 8 rows aren't used)

You can still use an analogue set to display the signal, but it's rendering pixels, not lines.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Okay, I get the argument. But I'm still sticking with the miniscule TV. A large set would look plain wrong in our room. Although the room's large, we've in effect divided it into sub-areas, and the TV area really only suits a 32 inch set. We might push the boat out and get a 37 inch, but that's arguably too big.

 

[mylan]

A timely article for this discussion, Andrew, I think your countrymen are turning on you
Half of U.K. men would swap sex for 50-inch TV - HDTV - MSNBC.com

 

[JeremyErwin]

What's the distance from the "viewing position" to the television?

 

[JeremyErwin]

I wonder if that includes wanking?

 

[Jeff Gatie]

See, it WAS an anti-US rant against our ostentatious consumerism.

 

[PaulDA]

There are several arguments at cross purposes in this thread.

One--bigger screen equals lower resolution than smaller screen with same pixel count. As might be said in the UK--BOLLOCKS. It's already been more than adequately explained in this thread, so I hope that fallacy is now put to rest.

Two--bigger screen in smaller room looks "wrong". Matter of taste, not a matter of science, so, in that case, to each his own. But those who choose the smaller screen should not feel the need to denigrate larger screens to justify their own choice.

Three--"why the big screen?" While some pseudo-Freudians seem to think they know the answer to this one, there are several others that do not require indirect insults and innuendo. A bigger screen creates the immersive experience one gets at the cinema (it is called "home cinema"/"home theatre", is it not?). If that is not a desired goal for one's home entertainment, that's fine. It is also a matter of taste/choice. Again, one should not feel the need to denigrate those of us who DO choose a bigger screen to justify one's own decision to forgo a large screen.

Three-Brits are NOT the only people who have among their population "anti-TV snobs". There may be a higher proportion of them there, but it is not unique to Britain nor are we "poor North Americans" incapable of "understanding" such a phenomenon.

Four--it appears that a few Brits are under the impression that if they walk into a typical North American house the main living room will very likely contain a "giant TV" that tastelessly overwhelms the space and is the centre of everyone's existence. I don't know anyone like that (well, maybe one person). Just about everyone I know who does have a "big TV"--42 inches +--(and they represent, perhaps, about 10 percent of my circle of friends, family and acquaintances) has it in a room dedicated to its use as a "movie first" display (as I do with my front projector). In the other rooms, where another TV is present, they are "ordinary" TVs ranging from 19" to 27" for the most part (even those with HDTVs are within those ranges). So let's not overgeneralize and assume things not in evidence.

Lastly, there are several ways to include a "big screen" in a "small room" for movies (if not everyday TV watching) that do not "overpower" the room--they all require a front projector, admittedly, but it can be done.

I can respect many reasons for not choosing a big screen and there are many valid ones among which to choose. But implying that those who do choose a big screen are somehow wasting their time and effort is not among those.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

This Freud, who is he? Is he a passenger?

 

[Steve Schaffer]

The average American tv buyer I see (I sell 'em for a living) is not interested in screen sizes much larger than 42-46". We are at the point where those really interested in HD television for it's own sake already have purchased bigger sets, usually 55"+ rear projection models.

Current buyers are looking to replace aging analog sets under the perception that the old sets will be unusable after the analog cutoff. When informed that this only affects ota reception and that a low to no cost converter box will be available they still use the transition as an excuse to buy one of the sexy new flat panel sets, usually in a size not too much bigger than their old set--typically 42-46".

Big rear projection sets which are much cheaper than good 42" lcd panels and have excellent pq go begging because they stick out in the back--very unfashionable.

 

[troy evans]

Andrew, if you prefer a smaller screen and feel the resolution is greater, that's fine. Everyone's different and wants different things. I see that you have invested in a 5.1 system. Now, this is arguable, but, I think a surround sound system has more to do with pulling you into a film than the screen itself. What really looks bad are the big RPTVs that I've seen so many people have in thier living rooms. They have nice rooms and then they plop one of these down in it. It's like parking a dump truck in a flower bed. I know alot of people here have taken the time to intergrate these sets in thier rooms by putting them in walls and such. Just to be clear, I'm speaking of the average person.