Size for distance / 8 feet
What size TV for 8 feet away?
From 8 feet (96 in, 244 cm), a 59-inch screen fills the SMPTE 30° everyday view and a 80-inch screen fills THX's 40° cinema view. Sizes in that range listed here: 65", 70", 75", 77".
The numbers for 8 feet
| Basis | Screen size | Screen width | Reading it |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMPTE 30° (mixed viewing) | 59" | 51.4 in | The screen fills 30° of your view — the comfortable everyday figure. |
| THX 40° (cinema) | 80" | 69.9 in | The screen fills 40° — immersive for film, a lot for news and sport all day. |
| 4K's own pixels visible from | 123" | 107.2 in | Only screens this big show 4K's pixels to 20/20 eyes from 8 ft — the point where 8K would start to help. |
| 4K looks sharper than 1080p from | 62" | 53.6 in | On smaller screens, 1080p already reaches the limit of 20/20 vision from 8 ft, so 4K adds no visible sharpness. |
At 8 feet the point where 4K looks sharper than 1080p, 62 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 8 feet on a 123-inch screen — larger than any TV listed — which is why 8K adds nothing you can see at this distance.
What a 8-foot room usually looks like
Eight feet is close to the classic sofa-to-wall distance in an average living room. It is the distance most TV buying advice implicitly assumes, which is why 55 to 75 inches dominate shop floors.
8 feet is the most common living-room distance: a sofa against one wall and the TV on the opposite one. This is where the jump from a 55-inch to a 65- or 75-inch set pays off most, because both standards land in that band; 4K pulls ahead of 1080p from 62 inches at this distance.
Compared with 7 feet, every extra foot of distance adds about 7 inches to the SMPTE size and 10 to the THX size. Both sizes are within the range of TVs listed here.
Choosing within the range
The two standards bracket a sensible choice rather than giving one answer. Lean toward 59 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 80 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 8 feet
- 65-inch: 40 models, e.g. LG OLED65C4PUA, LG OLED65G4SUB
- 70-inch: 1 model, e.g. Samsung UN70U8000HFXZA
- 75-inch: 29 models, e.g. LG 75UT7590PUA, LG 75QNED80TUC
- 77-inch: 16 models, e.g. LG OLED77B6GUA, LG OLED77C3AUA
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).