Size for distance / 13 feet
What size TV for 13 feet away?
From 13 feet (156 in, 396 cm), a 96-inch screen fills the SMPTE 30° everyday view and a 130-inch screen fills THX's 40° cinema view. Sizes in that range listed here: 98", 100", 115".
The numbers for 13 feet
| Basis | Screen size | Screen width | Reading it |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMPTE 30° (mixed viewing) | 96" | 83.6 in | The screen fills 30° of your view — the comfortable everyday figure. |
| THX 40° (cinema) | 130" | 113.6 in | The screen fills 40° — immersive for film, a lot for news and sport all day. |
| 4K's own pixels visible from | 200" | 174.3 in | Only screens this big show 4K's pixels to 20/20 eyes from 13 ft — the point where 8K would start to help. |
| 4K looks sharper than 1080p from | 100" | 87.1 in | On smaller screens, 1080p already reaches the limit of 20/20 vision from 13 ft, so 4K adds no visible sharpness. |
At 13 feet the point where 4K looks sharper than 1080p, 100 inches, falls between the SMPTE and THX sizes: at the everyday size the difference is marginal, at the cinema size it is visible. 4K's own pixels only become visible from 13 feet on a 200-inch screen — larger than any TV listed — which is why 8K adds nothing you can see at this distance.
What a 13-foot room usually looks like
Thirteen feet is a large basement den or a family room with a sectional along the far wall. At this distance a projector screen becomes a realistic alternative, especially in a room you can darken.
13 feet is a big room: a great room, a basement den or a long living room. The THX size of 130 inches is past what most TV lines offer, so this is where very large TVs (98", 100", 115") and projectors meet; a TV gives brightness for a sunny room, a projector the size for a dark one.
Compared with 12 feet, every extra foot of distance adds about 7 inches to the SMPTE size and 10 to the THX size. The SMPTE size is within reach of the largest TVs listed; the THX size is not.
Choosing within the range
The two standards bracket a sensible choice rather than giving one answer. Lean toward 96 inches for a room used for news, sport, gaming at a desk distance, or a bright room where a huge black rectangle dominates when the set is off. Lean toward 130 inches for a room built around films. Your eyes, not the chart, settle it: if you turn your head to follow the action, the screen is past 40° for you; if you lean forward to read captions, it is under 30°.
Measure from where your eyes are when seated to where the screen will be — not from the wall. A TV on a stand sits several inches in front of the wall, and a full-motion mount can bring it forward a foot or more. For comparison, the SMPTE distance for a 55-inch is 7 ft 5 in and the THX distance for a 65-inch is 6 ft 6 in.
TVs to look at for 13 feet
- 98-inch: 8 models, e.g. LG 98NU850BPUB, Samsung QN98QN990FFXZA
- 100-inch: 5 models, e.g. LG 100QNED84BU, Samsung MRN100R85HFXZA
- 115-inch: 4 models, e.g. LG 115QNED92BU, Samsung MRN115MR95FXZA
Sizes are geometry from the viewing angles and the 20/20 acuity limit cited by Wikipedia's Optimum HDTV viewing distance article, for a 16:9 screen. Viewing distances are geometry from published viewing angles: a 16:9 screen's width is 0.8716 x its diagonal, and the distance at which it fills a horizontal angle A is width / (2 x tan(A/2)). Resolution distances use the 20/20 acuity limit of one arcminute per pixel. The same formulas reproduce the reference figures quoted in the source (30 degrees = 1.6264 x diagonal; 31.2 degrees for 1080p; 58.37 degrees for 4K).