{"id":3499,"date":"2012-03-27T09:01:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T23:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=3499"},"modified":"2012-03-27T19:33:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T09:33:20","slug":"understanding-why-resolution-screen-size-and-viewing-distance-matter-for-hdtvs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2012\/03\/27\/understanding-why-resolution-screen-size-and-viewing-distance-matter-for-hdtvs\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding why Resolution, Screen Size and Viewing Distance Matter for HDTVs."},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember buying my first high definition TV way back when my wife and I moved into our first house. Back when I was living in a share house (this was around 5~6 years ago now) one of my room mates made the decision to get one. After moving out I figured that I could go without one for a while since I had a relatively large CRT screen that I could use in the interim. It didn’t take long before the urge hit me and I set out to get one for myself.<\/p>\n

My requirements were simple: I wanted a LCD that could do 1080p so that it would last me a fair while. Back then you were lucky to find any content that was greater than 480p that wasn’t on a DVD so I figured a 1080p screen would suit me for the foreseeable future. I had a budget limit too, $3000 was the top price I could pay and not a cent more. Of course all the sets that had my required feature set were well out of my price range, but I eventually lucked out when I found one that had a “bonus” 27″ set that I convinced them to take back and remove the price of it off the larger set. Flush with victory I walked out of there with a brilliant Samsung 46″ LCD display that still sits\u00a0prominently in my living room today, and probably will for a few more years to come.<\/p>\n

Now I consider myself something of an audio\/visual buff (not to the point of stupidity, mind you) so there was another reason why I wanted something capable of 1080p. You see our eyes, well ones with 20\/20 vision at least, are able to\u00a0perceive details down to a resolution of about 1\/60th of a degree of an arc. With this information in mind we can then extrapolate whether or not a screen of a certain size at a certain viewing distance will show any\u00a0perceivable difference. At the time I relied on some helpful forums that had rough guides as to what resolutions needed to be viewed at what distances but I just recently found this chart<\/a> which demonstrates the principle much more clearly:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking at my choice of screen (46″, 1080p) with my view distance (around 6~7ft) it’s clear that I made the right choice. Interestingly enough though should I want to go for the next resolution up and get the full benefit of it I’d have to get a screen that’s almost triple the size, which makes sense considering just how much higher resolution 4K footage is compared to 1080p. I’d strongly recommend using this as a guide if you’re considering buying a HDTV in the near future as there’s simply no reason to go for the biggest\/highest resolution screen you can get if you’re not going to be able to tell the difference between it and a cheaper set.<\/p>\n

This is all rendered somewhat moot by the fact that a set that’s very<\/em>\u00a0comparable to mine now retails for just $799 thanks to Kogan<\/a>. Back when the choice between the biggest\/best and the appropriate was on the order of a couple thousand dollars it really did matter. Today it’s not so much of a big deal as a very nice set can be had for under a third of the cost that it used to be and the differences between them are usually limited to the screen size.<\/p>\n

You’d think that this kind of price differential would make my blood boil but it’s just the way technology works. If you want something like a HDTV there’s really no point in delaying it for the next model as there will always be something better and cheaper just around the corner. I committed to the purchase fully aware of what I was getting into but I also made sure that my cash would see use over many, many years. So in reality I’ve pretty much came out even and I have never felt wanting for a new HDTV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember buying my first high definition TV way back when my wife and I moved into our first house. Back when I was living…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[1459,3330,3328,2237,3329,2810,37,3331],"class_list":["post-3499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-1080p","tag-4k","tag-hdtv","tag-purchase","tag-resolution","tag-screen","tag-video","tag-viewing-distance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/hdtv-resolution-distance-chart.png?fit=907%2C619&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-Ur","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}