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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 set. For a 16:9 screen, SMPTE recommends 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.

The first step in choosing the right screen for your needs is deciding which of the two aspect ratios you want for your home theater - 16:9 which matches 99% of broadcast and cable television feeds or 2.4 which is the wider screen most movies are shown in. For most people, it's going to be a 16:9 aspect ratio. This does mean that you’ll see some black bars on a wide screen movie, but all flat panel TV’s and the good majority of front projectors are a 16:9 aspect ratio. For more information on what widescreen is all about and why you’d want it if you are building a high performance theater, check out our article on 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.

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 are sitting more than about 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 as you go really large. Some projectors are not capable of lighting up a 2.4 screen larger than a 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 picking one out. If you are working with one of our AudioAdvice 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 one thousand of them, we know that no two jobs are ever the same.