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SofaView

About

Method, data and disclosure

SofaView answers one question: how big will this TV feel from where you sit? Here is how I work it out and what I do and don’t know.

Who makes this and how it is checked

SofaView is built and run by one person. Shopping for a living-room TV, I found that an inch number alone never answers “how big will it look from my seat?”, so I built a tool that shows it with geometry and a drawing. Every figure comes from the formulas below and nowhere else; where a manufacturer’s guide says something different, the page explains why. Models in the product lists are checked against the maker’s own page before they go in, and the figures and method were last reviewed on . The site earns from affiliate links (Amazon Associates here, a Korean retailer’s programme on the Korean pages) and from ads; neither affects a calculation or a ranking. Spotted a mistake? Write to contact@sofaview.com.

Calculations

Screen dimensions and viewing angles come from geometry and trigonometry. Mount height follows Samsung and LG: the middle of the screen at seated eye level, with a recommended range from an estimated 53 cm bottom edge (our TV-unit and stand example) up to the eye-level position. The calculations run in your browser, and your settings live in the page URL so you can share them. No name or contact detail is asked for. The usage records sent for visit statistics (Google Analytics) — sizes and distances chosen, models viewed and the store a link went to — are listed in the privacy policy.

  • Screen size. For a 16:9 panel with diagonal D, width = D × 16/√337 and height = D × 9/√337 (≈ 0.8716 D and 0.4903 D).
  • Viewing angle. θ = 2 · arctan(width / 2 / distance). Recommended range: 30° (the SMPTE cinema guideline’s minimum for the most distant seat) to about 40° (THX’s “distance in inches × 0.835 = screen size” rule as an angle).
  • Best size for a distance. The angle formula solved for width at 30° and at 40°, converted back to a diagonal.
  • Seated view. The default eye height is 42 in (about 107 cm), with a 60° horizontal frame. In the wall-mount calculator, enter your measured seated eye height: the room stays fixed while the TV and height reference move. The TV and furniture share the same scale.
  • Mount height. The default centres the screen at seated eye level; the bottom edge is eye height minus half the picture height. The low end uses an estimated 53 cm bottom edge (45 cm TV unit + 8 cm stand), capped at the eye-level position for large TVs. At very short distances, we raise it to keep the centre within 15° below eye level. That angle is a reference adopted from desk-monitor research (Jaschinski et al. 1998; Burgess-Limerick et al. 2000; OSHA), not a universal TV comfort standard. The range appears as a grey dashed box with a light green fill and as the green stretch on the slider. The yellow line marks the current centre. Enter your measured eye height in the wall-mount calculator.
  • Movie formats. Content is fitted without cropping: wider ratios letterbox (bars top and bottom), narrower ones pillarbox.
  • 4K detail. The distance at which one pixel subtends 1 arcminute, the usual definition of 20/20 acuity.

Reference angles

The 30° figure comes from SMPTE’s cinema design guideline (EG 18-1994, withdrawn 2003) and the 40° figure from THX’s living-room TV size advice; Samsung’s and LG’s “cm × 1.2” rule is also 40°. They describe comfort, not rules. Plenty of people enjoy sitting closer or further away.

Room presets

The Korean pages also offer Korean apartment living-room presets. They are approximations: where a published living-room width exists it is cited and about 0.8 m is subtracted for the sofa and TV unit; presets without a published figure are marked as estimates. The English pages work in feet or metres from the distance you measure yourself.

Products and affiliate links

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The English pages list best-selling TVs from Amazon.com whose model, size and panel I checked against each manufacturer’s own page; the Korean pages do the same with a Korean retailer’s affiliate programme. Paid links are labelled right next to the list and marked rel="sponsored". Within the size you pick, rows are ordered by Amazon best-seller rank (the date it was checked is shown next to the list), never by commission, and I show no prices I cannot keep current.

Movie ratios

The previews use an original illustration. I don’t list ratios for specific films until I can cite the exact release version, because the same film can differ between theatrical, disc, IMAX and streaming releases.