Just an informal poll- what size of screen do you use? What aspect ratio? How far back do you sit? And what PJ or resolution do you run? I'm simply curious. I have an 84" 16:9 screen about 12.5 feet from my viewing position, lit by an Optoma H31 @ 480P.
SDE & RBE is no problem at all, but my gut feeling is that my screen is a teensy bit too large. Since I don't like the screen anyways (a cheap Elite rollup) it's not a big deal- I'm probably going to order a Carada Criterion sometime between today and this time next week. Unlike almost everyone I know with a PJ, I'm planning to go a bit
smaller.
Smaller? Am I nuts? Isn't the big, immersive picture the reason to get a PJ in the first place? Well, yeah- to a point. This goes to my comments in another thread here, where I asked where you sit in a theater. Some people like to sit down near the front where the picture dominates their whole field of view. Some like to sit in the back. Some don't care. Me, I like to sit in a very specific 'sweet spot' very near the center. I generally arrive at the movie very early to get a good spot, usually giving the film a couple weeks to thin the crowds out. I move back until the center of the screen is at eye level. I'm not sure where this puts the viewing angle, but probably a tiny bit less than the 30 degrees recommened by THX.
So while artifacts and pixellation aren't a problem, for some reason I don't really like an overly large screen. Granted, at 12 feet I wouldn't mind a bit larger screen for 2:35 films, but movies shot at 1:78 or 1:85 seem to confuse my brain on a larger screen.
A last consideration is that to mount my screen a tad lower to more closely conform with my viewing preferences, my screen really can't be any larger than it is now. My new place is smaller than the old one, and unless I mount the screen high enough to clear my speakers, I must have one narrow enough to nestle between them with a enough clearance that the speakers won't block the line of sight for the best veiwing seats. 84" does just fit, but I will probably go a little bit smaller.
What am I buying? If I had decided I'd already have ordered!
I've decided on 77" at the smallest, probably 80" at the largest. The screen will almost certainly be a Carada Criterion in BW (it helps that the AH staff reviewed that same screen with the Optoma PJ I have!
).
Any comments?