Whilst many of us are house bound at the moment, we thought the following information my be useful to give you some guidance if upgrading your TV at some point in near future.

One of the most common questions we get asked is:
‘what size TV should I buy for my living room?’
Besides the subjective assessment of judging how the size of the TV will blend into the room/furniture/aesthetics, there is a more scientific way of answering this question. It comes down to the ‘field of view’ and the resolution of the content you are watching!

TV Size to Distance Calculator and the Science behind it:

Bigger and closer is usually better when it comes to choosing the perfect television for your room. Not only is it the biggest factor affecting the price of a television, but it also has a huge impact on the perceived picture quality.
Things to consider when working out what size TV or projector screen to buy:
1.Field of View
The human visual system has an angle of view of about 135 degrees horizontally. The size of the TV or screen and the distance we sit from it, determine our Field of View. This impacts how we perceive and immerse ourselves in the image displayed.
Since most TV resolutions found today are HD or 4K, It takes a very big TV watched from very close distance to see imperfections related to the resolution. Because of this, one can appreciate their TVs detail from much closer, for a more immersive experience. Just like a movie theatre, the more a TV fills your view, the more captivating the content will become.
That doesn’t mean you should be sitting a foot away from your TV. Not everybody prefers having the largest screen possible. Although we see up to 135 degrees horizontally, and while it makes some sense to get as large a TV you can for movies, content isn’t produced to be viewed while filling the entire field of vision. This becomes very apparent if you try to watch sports from up close while fixating a single part of the screen, as it gets quite nauseating.
The Guidelines from the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers recommends sitting at a distance where the screen fills up about 30° of your field of vision as a minimum for a good experience.
The graph above shows relationship between TV size and distance for achieving this optimum 30– 40° of view.
So, for example, according to the graph it is recommended that you would place your sofa between 5.5 to 7.5 feet away from a 55” Television.
This generally provides good guidance, but people that use their TVs mostly for watching movies may benefit from sitting a bit closer to get a more theatre-like experience. The SMPTE “reference” position for movie theatres and the THX recommendation is about 40°. The minimum angle of 30° vision works well for most usages though and sitting at a distance where the screen fills 30° of your horizontal field of view should be comfortable for most people. A 40° field is better for cinema like usage. A table showing distances is given below:

Screen Size…….Distance for 30°……..Distance for 40°
30″…………………4.1′ (1.24 m)……………3′ (0.92 m)
40″…………………5.5′ (1.66 m)……………4′ (1.22 m)
50″…………………6.8′ (2.06 m)……………5′ (1.53 m)
55″…………………7.5′ (2.28 m)……………5.5′ (1.68 m)
60″…………………8.2′ (2.48 m)……………6′ (1.83 m)
65″…………………8.9′ (2.69 m)……………6.5′ (1.98 m)
70″…………………9.5′ (2.9 m)……………..7′ (2.13 m)
75″…………………10.2′ (3.1 m)……………7.5′ (2.29 m)
85″…………………11.6′ (3.52 m)…………..8.5′ (2.59 m)

2. Angular resolution
The closer you are to a screen, the lower your perceived pixel density will be.
Higher field of view was first made possible with Full HD resolutions, but 4k enhances that ability even more. Sitting very close to a 1080p TV will look low resolution, even if it is playing a high quality 1080p HD movie. By increasing your distance from the TV, the density of the details will increase, producing a better image. This is the angular resolution: the number of pixels per angle. The farther away, the higher the angular resolution will be.
Since 4k TVs have such a large density of pixels, it is much more difficult for this issue to arise. You need to be quite close to a fairly large TV for it to be noticeably annoying.