hi everyone i'm scott newnam ceo of audio advice
this video is part of our home theater design series that covers virtually
everything about designing a home theater and today
i'm going to be talking about how to choose the best screen size
for your room if you want more information on anything covered in this
video there's a link in the description to our
full article on selecting your screen size
as well as links to all other parts of our home theater design series
at audioadvice.com you can explore all of our articles and videos on virtually
everything home theater related or even design your own home theater in
our interactive home theater design tool shown here and
throughout the video now let's get started
one of the most commonly asked questions we get is how
big should my screen be well the answer is usually
as big as you can make it if you want watching a movie at home
to be the same type of fully immersive experience you get in a movie theater
the screen needs to fill up a good part of your field of vision
there are two groups that lead the charge in specifying what should be the
proper viewing distance one is the society of motion picture and
theater engineers called smpte and the other is thx a
lucasfilm standard for 16x9 screens smpte recommends
about a 30 degree viewing angle from the screen while thx
suggests a 36 degree viewing angle increasing the viewing angle
translates to sitting closer to the screen we've had hundreds of customers
sit in our theater rooms to determine what
percentage feels right for them very simply play in action film and have
them change their distance to the screen until it feels right for them
if you don't live close to either of our raleigh or charlotte north carolina
showrooms no problem we have a fully interactive
tool on our website that allows you to virtually design your
home theater from the ground up i'd suggest watching
this full video first so you fully understand the
concepts the math and the trade-offs and then going to the
interactive tool in the description it will easily be
worth your time to invest the few minutes to understand the concepts
in this video so you can choose the right parameters in the tool
then the tool will guide you through some measurements of your room
and will do most of the math for you so you don't need to write down
all the math in this video you just want to conceptually understand it before
working with a home theater expert or using our home theater design tool in
the tool you'll be able to see just how big a
screen you need as well as measurements for speaker placement
and other aspects of your theater so the first decision you have to make
when you're thinking about your screen is what aspect ratio you want
and there's two primary aspect ratios the one you're looking at now
is 16x9, 16x9 is the same aspect ratio that if you
went into a regular store and saw a bunch of televisions
that's the aspect ratio so for most people who come in and tell us
hey i really watch a lot of sports and i watch mainly broadcast or cable
television instead of movies we tell them 16x9
is the right thing to go with because this is what
the signal for sports and most broadcasting cable comes in if you chose
16x9 and you decided to watch a movie so i'll stop this and i'll jump over and
put on what a normal movie would be most movies are produced today in what's
called 2.4 aspect ratio so if i went up over here
to say fast and furious and i went in and i said let's let's play a scene from
that you'll see if i do the race in havana
it's going to project a 2.4 image on top of
a 16x9 screen so consequently what you get are black bars at the top
and black bars at the bottom if you didn't want black bars and you said i
really watch movies most of the time that's what i want the best experience
to be in my own home then you would go to a 2.4 size screen
so we actually sell in our higher end theaters what you're seeing here which
is the ability to have both screens it can convert from 16x9 to 2.4 but what
you see now is we've taken that same picture and
enlarged it brought out the sides and this is a 2.4
aspect ratio so again if you love movies and that's
what you want the best experience from you go 2.4 and then when you run 16x9
you'll have bars on the sides as opposed to the top
for more information on what widescreen is all about and why you would want
it if you were building a high performance theater check out our
article at audioadvice.com that further explains
widescreen after you decide what aspect ratio you
want the next step is to measure the distance from the screen
to your main seating position if you have flexibility in where to put your
seats that's even better make a note of your
distance and get out a calculator for a 16x9 ratio most people feel a
30 degree field of vision is perfect for a 2.4 widescreen
a 42 degree field of vision is chosen most of the time
for those of you who like to get closer to the front row of a movie theater
a 36 degree field of vision is the best choice for 16x9
a 16x9 screen use your distance from the screen
convert it to inches and multiply it times .746
to get the suggested diagonal size so for the example of sitting
seven feet away again you would need a 60 to 65 inch television
instead for the 36 degree viewing angle for a 2.4 widescreen you use
0.83 as the multiplier as an example if you were sitting 10 feet from the
screen you would convert 10 feet to inches which is 120
multiply this by 0.83 and that will tell you
that a 100 inch screen would be perfect for a 2.4 screen
to achieve our suggested 48 degree viewing angle
for a 2.4 screen it's your distance in inches
times 0.963 this means if you were 10 feet away from the screen
you would multiply 120 times 0.963 which equals about 115 inch diagonal
screen a tip we always tell people who are
planning on building their theater themselves
is once you have done the math to figure out the ideal screen size
get some painters tape and tape out what the screen or projected image size will
be to see how it will feel to you on your
actual wall just because the math tells you
to get one screen size you may prefer to adjust slightly depending on your
personal preference as you can see to get that immersive
theater experience the screen needs to be pretty large this
is why most people opt for a front projector over a flat panel tv
when they're sitting more than 12 feet away as projector technology has
improved it is easier to go with larger projector
screen sizes the one caveat about a front projector
is that you do need to think about its light output some projectors are not
capable of lighting up a 2.4 screen larger than say 150 inch diagonal we
have a whole separate article at audioadvice.com
on projector screens if you want to learn more about what to look for when
pricing them out if you're working with one of our audio
advice experts either in person or over the phone
we will do the math for you and make sure you don't make any mistakes
there is a lot that goes into planning the perfect home theater
and after installing over 1,000 of them ourselves
we know that no two jobs are ever the same
like i said at the beginning of this video this is part of the audio advice
home theater design series of videos that cover all aspects of designing a
home theater room down in the description you will find
links to all of the articles and videos as well as our really cool interactive
home theater design tool if you have any questions or decide
you'd like some help planning your home theater give us a
call or chat with our team at audioadvice.com or if you're near
raleigh or charlotte north carolina swing into either of our super showrooms
and we'd love to help you out thank you for watching if you enjoyed
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