Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel ~  Does that viewing distence vary with screen size > would 4 ft be the prefered distantce for a 60" as it is for a 32"?
(If so would seem to limit practical size?) |
The maximum effective viewing distance will vary according to the size of the screen you are viewing, and is a linear relationship. In addition, the resolution you will be using has an effect: 1080 requires you to be closer than 720 which requires you to be closer than 480, for a given size of screen.
The math works out like this: the human eye (assuming 20/20 vision) has a sensitivity of 1/60 degree of arc in the field of vision.
With a screen size of 32" diagonal, each pixel in a 1080 image will be roughly .66mm in width.
Given the above figures, at about 3.7 feet, you can fully distinguish the pixels in a 1080 image on a 32" screen.
Now, let's double the size of the screen to 64". That doubles the pixel size to roughly 1.31mm in width. Because of that, our viewing distance has now doubled as well, from about 3.7 feet to about 7.3 feet.
Now, what if you go from 1080 to 480? Well, 480 is roughly 44% of the resolution, which means that you can sit roughly 2 1/4 times further from the same size screen. Using our examples above, with a 32" screen, you could see all of the detail of a 480 image from a distance of a little over 8', and with a 64" screen, you'd be looking at almost 16 1/2'.