What size flat-screen TV? LCD or Plasma? Mount into brick?

by philg

Part of my planned move to suburbia includes shutting down 90 percent of my brain and spending the rest of my life watching 100 channels of HDTV from Verizon FiOS. The most logical place to sit and watch TV seems to be about 8.5′ back from a fireplace, above which is a nice flat brick wall that is part of the chimney. One additional constraint is that I want to use this TV for viewing/editing/critiquing digital photographs (much higher resolution than 1920×1080). A final constraint is that I don’t want to go too crazy with loudspeakers, so the TV should have at least the front channel speakers built in.

So… what size TV for an 8.5′ viewing distance?

Should it be plasma or LCD? Any particular brand?

What about mounting on a brick wall?

[Note: I don’t plan to use the fireplace underneath the TV, so no need to worry about heat damage.]

26 thoughts on “What size flat-screen TV? LCD or Plasma? Mount into brick?”

  1. The new Sony Bravia 240Hz “motionflow” screens will give you the right balance of quality and reliability. Not the cheapest, but easy to control, great picture and very robust. They’re LCD. That is the right way to go at this size for what you are doing.

    You’ll probably find the 46″ screens fine for what you need.

    Check out a good quality LCR (left/centre/right) speaker for use in this way. You could look at http://www.artcoustic.com/download/DF-Multi%2042.pdf (you could get a discrete pair of rear speakers and small subwoofer too.

    A simple flat bracket from Vogels or somewhere would be fine.

  2. Steve: A variety of Web sources seem to claim that 1.5-2.5X the screen diagonal size is the right viewing distance and that with a high quality source, you want to be closer to 1.5X. Eight feet divided by 1.5 equals 64″. Why wouldn’t a 60″ or 65″ TV be the right size?

  3. When it comes to brackets and cables, don’t get ripped off. Use monoprice.com. Tilt and swivel VESA bracket is $60 and you HDMI cables are right at $1/foot.

  4. I know you’re in the market now but I just saw the brand new Bravia’s here in Tokyo at CEATEC last week. They’re all LED and much, much brighter and use less energy than the previous version. I dont know when they’re going to debut in the US, what the pricing will be, but if you saw the difference between the old MacBook Pro screens and the new LED Macbook Pro screens – that’s the difference.

  5. Trenton: I checked out that monoprice Web site. They sell CAT5 patch cables for 41 cents! I think it would be $10 at Best Buy.

  6. Hi Phil,

    I have a 50″ Panasonic plasma TV at about the same viewing distance, and it is plenty large. Most of the larger ones still won’t get you a better screen resolution — they just have bigger pixels.

    A few tips:
    1) Check craigslist for good deals. I bought my TV for $1400 when brand new ones of the exact same model were selling for $2000. You can get a whopper discount there for a perfect TV (mine had no display issues and only minor scuffs in non-noticeable areas.)

    2) Panasonic tends to be the highest-rated brand for plasmas — other than Pioneer Elite, which is 5x the cost. I really have no regrets with the Panasonic, and I had extra money from not buying the Pioneer…

    3) I used some of that extra money to buy a small-form-factor PC and a DVIHDMI cable (which I picked up from monoprice — much like Trenton, above, did.) I use the PC to stream Netflix movies, watch downloads, etc. I bought a wireless keyboard/mouse combo, so for about $600, I had a fantastic setup. We watched the Olympics (live streaming) on it recently. I honestly didn’t think we’d use it that much, but we use it ALL. THE. TIME. The TV I have runs at 1080i — though if I were buying today, I’d make sure to get a 1080p so I could run 1920×1080 at 60Hz instead of 30Hz.

    4) I used the rest of the extra money to buy a HD Tivo, which I highly recommend. Love it, love it, LOVE IT. I use it with Comcast, but it will work with FIOS too.

    I absolutely love what I have and would never want to go back to my old 27″ CRT!

    Hope this helps,
    -Erica

  7. I find the modern trend of mounting flat panels over a fireplace misguided – the screen ends up too high for comfortable viewing over long periods.

    See if you can find a friend with a screen mounted this way and spend some time watching it, to see if this will be a problem for you. Anyone else got thoughts on this?

  8. I would think carefully about putting a TV that high up. Think about your neck. Mine would hurt if I watched a two hour movie with my head tilted up that much.

    Above the fireplace was my intended location for a new TV, until I tried looking at the picture that’s currently there for 1/2 an hour. I decided that the bottom of the TV should be no higher than eye level for me.

    I like the Pioneer plasma sets for the rich blacks and very accurate colors. I haven’t bough one yet, but plan on it soon. The LCD we have now good for sports and bright colors, but not good for movies with dark scenes.

    I would skip editing of photos on the TV.

  10. How bright will the viewing room be? If it is consistently dim, you could go with an easily upgradable projector and mount a screen on the wall. I considered this first until I saw how poor the brightness was in daylight. So I’ve since gone with a 60″ Sony rear projection TV which works well in a variety of ambient light. If you like movies (or sports), the bigger the screen the better. High quality surround sound makes a big difference in quality of HDTV movie viewing.

  12. thanks for replying

    TV was made for an 18″ screen at about 18′ away. Resolutions have improved, and people’s appetite for the tube has increased. Some of my clients would stick their nose to the screen of the local cinema if they could.

    You can accommodate a surprising amount, but a larger screen can be tiring (well worth having it correctly calibrated on installation – most screens are ramped up to scream out at you in the store). You want to do two things – a lean forward photo-editing job, and sit back TV/movie watching. I have a high-def 37″ screen in my home in the UK, at about the same distance, but we only do prosaic tasks on the mac when it feeds that display, like video conferencing. All high-quality stuff is done on a second monitor.

    So what does all that mean? Go to a decent dealer, or to Magnolia inside Best Buy, and check out what YOU and your family are comfortable with. A small increase in the diagonal size adds a lot to the area you’ll see. And make sure it isn’t too high over the fireplace too, otherwise you’ll get a crick in your neck (seriously).

    Finally, the volume in flat-panel displays (for corporate, educational and digital signage markets) is still in the 42″ region. This means that the fabrication plants churn out this size, which means that prices for this size are significantly lower than the more esoteric larger.

    Hope that helps

  13. size. I have a 46 inch screen which is a bit small but I sit up to 15 feet away. 50 inch screen likely be ok for your use. It is possible to have too large of a screen.

    plasma usually still a better picture but heavy and hot. The biggest drawback to plasma is the glass screen. Having any illumination behind the viewer will lead to the screen acting like a mirror so a window behind you can be very distracting.

    For masonry I like blue Tapcon screws. Requires a hammer drill or LOTS of patience/ extra tapcon drill bits to drill the holes in brick or concrete. With Tapcon avoid use in the mortar since it may fracture and is not very strong. Mortar much easier to drill in but would need sleeves.
    a helpful site:
    http://www.acehardware.com/sm-installing-masonry-anchors–bg-1283458.html
    Consider how you will run your cables on the brick. Most plasma screens have mongo power cords.

    TV speakers usually lame. Center speaker most important one not to skimp on with a surround sound. An elegant, but unknown to me, would be a sound bar
    http://www.crutchfield.com/g_316150/Sound-Bar-Speaker-Solutions.html?tp=6561
    which uses some phase shift audio tricks to fool your brain into thinking you are in a surround system (in theory).

  14. Tim: I used that viewing distance calculator. Thanks. The SMPTE and THX minimum viewing angles for movies yield truly huge screens, even at an 8′ distance: 59″ diagonal for SMPTE and 72″ for THX. Based on “visual acuity”, you’d want to be no more than 8.5′ back from a monster 65″ screen in order to see all of the resolution.

  15. Folks: When I said “editing photos”, I didn’t mean using Photoshop, but getting together with a group of people and choosing the best photos from among a set, the way that magazine photo editors used to work around a light table. Maybe the right word is “collaborative viewing”.

  16. Pioneer Elite plasma all the way… 50″ 0r 60″, model #’s 110FD or 150FD.

    Upside: best on the market
    Downside: $$$$$

  18. Our 46″ Sony is great from 8-10 ‘. For digital photo viewing, the Sony PS3 does fantastic HD slide shows, is also a Blue Ray player, MP3 player and a Web browser, all in one. The PS3 also makes for a great photo editor as you can view several images on screen at once, in the “photo album” slide show mode. Photos can be loaded via the CF card slot, DVD or wireless! The PS3 does not cost much more than most stand-alone Blue Ray players but does a LOT more.

    The PS3 also does games, but who has time for that?

  19. I mounted a seven foot wide Graywolf screen to the ceiling above my fireplace, put a Phillips soundbar system just underneath the screen, and used a Casio DLP projector. I got it all for less than $1600 and I am perfectly happy with the results.

    The screen is not too high (in fact I usually use a neck pillow to watch) and it rolls up out of sight for the 23 hours per day that I don’t need it. The gray screen color improves dark colors, and reflects less stray daylight.

    The soundbar is just two pieces, the soundbar and a subwoofer, and it plays CDs and DVDs.

  20. Another vouch for monoprice. I bought an HDMI cable from them a year ago – cheaper than anywhere else, and works perfectly.

  21. A few thoughts:

    1) Bigger probably still means plasma, though LCDs keep getting bigger. I think you will find it hard to get a TV that is higher than HD resolution, and it’s not going to be great at critiquing pictures. You may also find that a proper video calibration conflicts with a calibration for pictures (depending on what equipment you’re using for the pictures).

    2) Buy yourself a copy of the Avia or Video Essentials DVD to do calibration. Most sets are set up horribly from the factory so they stand out in the showroom, but you can do a decent job of setup yourself on many (some high end ones are coming with calibrated modes). It’s simple to do and doesn’t take that long.

    3) Do yourself a favor, and don’t use the built-in speakers. They are universally crap. There are some nice/cheap surround speaker systems (Energy makes nice ones) that don’t cost an arm and a leg and sound 1000 times better than the built-ins.

  22. I agree with other posters, over the fireplace may be kind of neck strainer.

    I sit about 9′ from my 47″ Samsung LCD and feel pretty good about it.

    I would say that when I watch one of my favorite movies, ‘2001’, I kind of wish I had purchased a plasma TV. If you want to check black levels there is nothing better than the second scene in ‘2001’, when the ape throws the bone in the air and it cuts to outer space. Kubreck’s outer space is pure black. I had to do a lot of tweaking of my settings to get a nice black, and I still have some ‘clouds’, aka ‘mura effect’ in the deep space scenes. I think a plasma would do better with the pure black scenes in this move. Certainly there is no better black level test disk.

    I’ve never noticed mura in any other movie, but this is one of my favorites.

  23. All flat panel displays are pretty crappy when it comes to contrast (particularly in the grey/dark grey/black area) and black levels generally.

    If you want 2001 (or any film that is pretty dark – for example “The Road to Perdition”) to look great what you want is a CRT or a high quality scaler or processor and a very recent display that focuses on this area – the Sony LCDs and the Pioneer Kuro plasmas aren’t bad.

  24. Hi Phil,

    Have you considered purchasing a digital-to-analog processor to format and enlarge your photos as high-quality Ilford positives? You could mount these on a back-lit frame, or make c-prints. This method would allow you to avoid the editing involved in choosing your photo exhibit/slide show, because anything you display will look great. All that free time enjoying your pictures will go well with…

    turning on a radio instead. Particularly for tonight’s game. On non-game days, you can have people over and show off your pictures and play LP’s of master recordings on whatever stereo you own. (I suggest monophone recordings of classical music, but they are hard to find.)

    In all sincerity,

    Judi

  25. I can’t help with the TV’s, but I live in a concrete bunker and have done a fair amount of mounting on masonry. One solution I’ve found works well is the sleeves made out of lead. Properly fitted, they are quite bombproof and hold lots of weight. Be very sure of where you’re drilling; covering any stray holes up is messy and tedious. And as mentioned, you’ll need a hammer drill or a pocket full of masonry bits. If you’re using a regular drill, making a small pilot hole (1/8″ or so) before drilling the larger hole for the sleeve gives cleaner, quicker results, and usually lets you get more mileage out of your masonry bits.

  26. HI – I just bought a 46 inch high end Sharp Aquos from a high end home theater store in my area. LOVE IT!! It is set diagonally in the corner of the room facing a sofa and love seat that are both somewhere between 7-10 feet away depending on which seat you are in – size seems perfect- but the next size up could work for you as well if you have the space.

    I also have a fireplace and thought about hanging it above the fireplace – glad that I did not – this is NOT a comfortable viewing angle and will hurt your neck. The most comfortable angle is straight-ahead with the center of the screen at eye level. I have mine placed on a stand.

    For sound, I had it connected to the Onkyo mini stereo home system I already had. Did not buy a center speaker as yet. May not need one – It sounds pretty good now – My next purchase will be a sub-woofer. I also use these speakers for my IPOD, and for my XM satellite radio – Everything is on one nice stand.

    I am very happy with this choice.

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