I am thinking about buying a 60" plasma tv, but my room is only about 12 or 13 feet wide. The guy at the store would sell me one if I told him my room was 2 feet wide, so does anyone have an idea if this would worK?
I really really want a huge plasma to watch sports on, but I don’t wanna go blind, you know?
How far away from the TV will you sit? And are you going into debt to get this monster?
Not going into debt (thankfully). Will be sitting about 13 feet away.
A 60" should be fine. I sit about 10 feet away from my 42" plasma, and it could be bigger. When playing driving video games, I find it better to sit about 5 feet away to see the road ahead better.
I often watch TV on my 24" monitor. It’s just two feet or so away from my head, so it’s basically the only thing in my field of vision. It’s great.
Oh yeah, video games! Awesome - can’t wait!
Test it. Get some paper or foam core and cut a piece the same size as the planned TV and put it where the TV will be. The general rule for duplicating the movie experience is the “SMPTE Nose Rule”. It’s done like this:
Sit where you will normally be sitting. Close your right eye. Look at your screen with your left eye and move your head so the tip of your nose is apparently touching the right edge of the screen. Then, without moving your head, close your left eye and open your right. At the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) optimum distance, your right eye should see the tip of your nose at the left edge of the screen.
This works for HD material, but may be too close if the majority of the material you’re going to be viewing is not in HD.
If you’re going to be playing video ganes, you have to be extra careful with plasmas. I’ve installed dozens of them, and I HATE plasma technology because of burn-in. Burn-in is uneven wear on the screen’s phosphors. Areas that constantly display a brighter area wear out quicker. Every sports fan has a dark area in the lower right-hand corner of their screen with the ESPN logo burned in. When they watch any channel other than ESPN, they get this dark logo in the corner of any bright scene. LCD and DLP do not exhibit this phenomena, only plasma and (to a lesser extent) CRT. I’ve seen this on plasma TVs used for computer display and if the user watches financial news channels with a constant “ticker” across the bottom.
Optimum distance you should be sitting from the screen is roughly 3x the size, but you can do 2x and still be fine.
Gurk! Thanks awfully for the information! I have a 1990s CRT and it’s to the stage where it occasionally makes funny noises and needs percussive maintenance. So I’ve been told both Yea and Nay regarding plasma.
Given this, I’m definitely going to stay away from plasma. I don’t need to have a permanent status bar shadow at the bottom of the TV. 
I bought a 55 inch for my living room. When it arrived I was a little overwhelmed. But I got used to it and like it now.
The rule is this–never buy a TV that is larger than the room you intend to put it in.
I want to reiterate the concern about burn-in. If you watch a lit of one channel that puts a logo in a corner, this will happen to you.
The distance shouldn’t be a problem, but you can certainly take a tape measure to the store with you and check things out before you buy.
If you decide to go with rear projection instead, that distance is marginal. I have a 57" rear projection tv and closer than 10 feet and things start looking bad.
I think the biggest issue will be if you want to host a large party and have people sitting on the floor. The larger the t.v. the farther back the front row of people have to sit.
We have a 55" inch tv in our 20x20 room. It is a good size for parties because the room is large enough to give a lot of people proper clearance from the t.v. Our friends just installed a 60" LCD in a room that is much smaller. It’s gorgeous but not great for large crowds.
The good thing with a plasma is that you should be able to sit lower and still be able to see. Our rear projection t.v. viewing gets distorted when you try to lay down and look up at it. That’s a bummer.
There is also a big problem viewing from the sides. You need to be pretty squarely centered on it for the best picture.
40 - 50" might be better for your room, since you’ll start seeing some pixilization if you sit too close. Especially for the non HD channels.
Then again, have you ever heard anyone say “that TV is just too big”?
I’ve heard it very occasionally, but then I have a projection system. My screen is 7½ feet and I have nothing but pity for people who measure their viewing in “inches”.
Damn straight. Screw 60 inches - Morrison needs to go for at least 5 feet.
My rooom is 12 X 20, and I sit 11 feet away from a 102" diagonal screen (front projection).
55" is not big enough for the room you describe, if you’re going to be sitting 13’ back. The ‘sweet spot’ for HDTV for a screen your size and 20/20 vision is probably at about 8-10’. If I sat 13’ back from a 55" screen, it would just be too small. You’d lose half the benefit of HD.
13’ might be more appropriate for standard definition TV, but I’d definitely size my TV/viewing position for HD, because that’s where the real viewing pleasure is.
In any event, 55" is not too small. Get the biggest TV you can afford if you’re sitting that far back.
Ages ago, before plasma, I briefly worked at an electronics store and almost got fired for selling a (rear view projection) TV set that was even larger, to an elderly man who had a room about the size of yours.
I told the owner of the store that I tried to talk the guy out of it, but - he, uh, really wanted to watch porn and have it be life sized or bigger.
The guy was about 70 years old, lived alone, and classic movies (and porn) was his one and only joy in life. So, I went and helped install the television…I have to admit it was pretty daunting to see that hugeass television in that small room…but ya know what? It was no worse than sitting in the front row of a small movie theater…he had one large recliner chair at the other end of the room and to be honest, the quality wasn’t bad from that distance.
That guy came back to the electronics store where I worked and was constantly renting porn from us…so obviously a large screen in a small room is not bad for everyone.
To put some numbers behind this:
For movie viewing, THX recommends that you sit in a location that gives you a viewing angle of between 26 degrees and 36 degrees (in other words, if you drew a line from your nose to one side of the screen, and one from your nose to the other side, the angle between them should be between 26 and 36 degrees.
This is actually important, because the feeling of being immersed in a movie comes in large part from having your peripheral vision triggered, as it constantly is in real life. Your peripheral vision is most sensitive to motion, and so when you sit close enough to involve your peripheral vision, you get that movie theater experience where you really get involved in what’s on the screen.
Anyway, for a 60" diagonal screen, 26 degrees is at about 9.5 feet, and 36 degrees is just under 7 feet. Now, the latter is almost certainly too close because of the limitations of picture resoluton (and the 36 degree number is for people who like to sit in the front row - if you like to sit in the middle of the theater, the 26 degree number more closely matches your preference).
For a viewing distance of 13 feet, 26 degrees happens when you get to a screen size of just over 80 inches. So there’s no way that that TV is too small for the room, unless other considerations apply (money, wall space, whatever)