Both reasons I was looking at OLED, despite the size disadvantage. I certainly don't need the extra brightness, our living room is east facing so pretty much no direct sunlight after 11am in summer. I'm actually considering looking at ways to move the space around and bring the sofas closer to the TV setup, just got to convince the other half that change is good
. On a similar note, what's the optimal distance from a 55" 4k panel? Online information seems to be spread from 1m to 5m+, which is useless!
1m is definitely too close.
I think all this stuff about optimal viewing distances for TV screens is completely overplayed.
It's a great selling tool for TV manufacturers who want to push people to buying the bigger and bigger screens, and no doubt there are a lot of consumers too who'll use it as justification that they
need- / absolutely must have- / can't live without the biggest screen size in Christendom. It's much easier to say "
the Internet says we (I) must have this size, dear" rather than "
Fred down the pub has been bragging about his 65" telly. I'll show him. I'm getting the 75"
This idea of a perfect screen size for a viewing distance has come from the world of cinema. In that world it does actually make some sense.
Recommended screen sizes for cinemas are based on a few main factors. The screen shouldn't be so large that the viewer has to keep moving their eyes to take in the main action zone which is the central area about 2/3rds the width of the screen. Second, the screen shouldn't be so small that the brightness of the screen is uncomfortable to view compared to the darkness of the background.
There are also some guidelines for resolution, but since people have differing eyesight and the resolution of the screen image is different for 35mm film vs 70mm vs IMAX vs Digital Cinema 4K / 8K then there's just too much scope for the goal posts to move to come up with one number that fits all. All of this comes from THX, the standards organisation who set out to make sure that cinema patrons were getting a minimum standard of performance from the new breed of feature films with better sound as action films such as Star Wars hit cinemas in the 70s.
These recommendations were based on viewing in a cinema. But cinemas aren't peoples lounges. The conditions are different.
In a cinema, there's very little additional light other than the reflected light from the screen, and that's why the projected image needs to be a minimum size for the auditorium. Viewing a bright screen against too much black background puts strain on the eyes. Also, cinemas have some consistency when it comes to image resolution. Good 35mm film prints have the equivalent of roughly 4K resolution. 70mm and IMAX put that up further. At home, we've still got legacy SD at 576i all the way through to UHD (4K-ish), so our viewing distances need to be longer to cope with this much wider range of onscreen resolution.
In a perfect world all of our source material would originate at the highest resolution currently practical, but that's simply not possible. We can't go back in time and reshoot Steptoe & Son in 4K, or insist that the news satellite feed from some war ravaged country is at least 1080p, so even with upscaling and choosing only to watch HD channels, what's actually on those channels may well be something far below the resolution of the TV screen we are watching on. Our viewing distance then needs to take account of that in a way that just isn't a factor with commercial cinema.
IMO, the THX screen size charts have been misinterpreted and then used as a basis by all and sundry to have the "right" number, like it's some kind of King Arthur's sword.
Read the text on the
THX article and you'll see that (a) they say HDR and WCG are for more noticeable than screen resolution, and (b) that the chart represents the points where sitting too close reveals the pixel structure, and that wrecks the illusion of TV.
If anyone is worried that their TV is too small and it will cause eye strain when watching in the dark then they're watching wrong.
TVs are too bright for watching in the dark. They were too bright four decades ago when we had 22" and 26" 4:3 sets that put out a fraction of the screen brightness of even the cheapest LCD TVs now. They're certainly too bright now that we have retina-searing brightnesses of over 1000 Nits (cd/2) possible from some of the higher-end LED sets.
When viewed in subdued lighting conditions, TV needs a backlight to soften the boundary between the screen brightness and the surrounding background. Put this in, and all the concerns about eye strain go away.
Put in a colour correct backlight such as the
MediaLight MKII Flex and you get the additional benefit that the backlight colour doesn't influence your perception of the onscreen colours. This one is dimmable, and it maintains colour consistency even when dimmed. That's really important.
