How far away should you sit from your HDTV?
There's a lot written about HD resolutions and how amazing they are but what a lot of people don't take into consideration is how big your screen is and how far away you sit from it.
Both of those factors will determine whether you can actually perceive the extra resolution in your spangly new TV. If you sit too far away from your screen you won't be able to tell the difference between the standard and higher resolutions.
So, for example, with a 42" set if you sit within about 5 or 6 feet of it, you will see the full benefit of 1080p but move to 15 feet away and you will see no difference between 480p and 1080p.
Check out the graph put together by Carlton Bale that shows exactly how the 3 factors work together (click image for bigger version):
Very interesting stuff and it shows that the size of your screen and how far you sit from it are important considerations when buying your TV.
Via HDTV UK and HD Blog.
2 comments:
I would say that graph is way, way out. Sat at 10 feet from my 32 LCD, I can clearly see the difference between 1080 and 720...
I agree, that graph is definitely wrong as I can also tell the difference between 480p and 720p from much greater distances than the chart suggests.
The figures on the chart are calculated based on the visual acuity of the human eye (effectively how much detail the eye can see based on the smallest angle over which it can distinguish between two points). The chart is indeed correct based on this calculation (yes, i was sad enough to check!), but the thing that it doesn't take into account is the fact that people have 2 eyes so the angles I mentioned earlier can overlap.
I am not even going to attempt to work out the implications of this, but I think that it might go some way to explaining the apparent differences between this chart and real-life observation.
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