Someone posted a build that is 10.7 feet wide and about 12 deep, with a 135 inch 16:9 screen and seating between roughly 6.5 and 7.3 feet back depending on how far the chair reclines. That works out near a 70 degree viewing angle, which is a long way past what the reference standards ask for and well into the territory people normally only get at a commercial screen.
I have sat in a room set up like that and it is genuinely a different experience, but it is not a free one. Past about 50 degrees your eyes start doing work during wide shots, subtitles at the bottom corner become a head turn, and anything shot handheld gets a lot more physical than the director planned. It also stops flattering the source. At that angle you are close enough to read the screen surface, the projector's own structure, and every compression artefact the disc or stream left behind.
The screen itself is the clever part. Milliskin spandex as a cheap acoustic transparent surface is a well travelled trick and it does work, but people should go in knowing the tradeoffs: you lose light through it, you need something absorbent behind the speakers or you get bounce coming back through the fabric, and stretch tension is the whole ballgame for keeping it flat. Getting speakers behind the screen in a room that narrow is worth all of it, though. Front wall depth used for storage is the other smart call here.
Anyone else sitting past 60 degrees full time? I am curious whether you settled there or crept forward over the years and stopped noticing.
I have sat in a room set up like that and it is genuinely a different experience, but it is not a free one. Past about 50 degrees your eyes start doing work during wide shots, subtitles at the bottom corner become a head turn, and anything shot handheld gets a lot more physical than the director planned. It also stops flattering the source. At that angle you are close enough to read the screen surface, the projector's own structure, and every compression artefact the disc or stream left behind.
The screen itself is the clever part. Milliskin spandex as a cheap acoustic transparent surface is a well travelled trick and it does work, but people should go in knowing the tradeoffs: you lose light through it, you need something absorbent behind the speakers or you get bounce coming back through the fabric, and stretch tension is the whole ballgame for keeping it flat. Getting speakers behind the screen in a room that narrow is worth all of it, though. Front wall depth used for storage is the other smart call here.
Anyone else sitting past 60 degrees full time? I am curious whether you settled there or crept forward over the years and stopped noticing.
