How big can TVs get?

can your OWN viewing room fit 125"?? My guess is around 80" for a city dweller

Panasonic has a 150" plasma available. Huge TVs are out there, just not at your local Best Buy.

There's been endless discussions on size on this forum in the past years. Most people simply want to do other things with their living rooms than have it dominated by a monster TV. And for those who can afford a dedicated theatre room, high-end front-projection is often the choice.

There have been a couple of tentative announcements of LCDs over 65 inches during the past year or two, but so far none have come to market. As the economy picks up, a few around 70-75 inches might be expected. But there's no indication that 80 inchers will even be announced anytime soon, let alone become mainstream.

What about the monster hydro bill that comes with them.

80" will not be here in the near future but the topic is max size.

I use city dwellers as proxy as I think they will be the driving force for huge size mass market adoption. You don't have that big a wall for most apartments to go above 80"

My vision goes something like this:

A thin-film screen put over an entire wall(or more) like wallpaper, and combines a color variety of e-ink tech found in Kindle - so it can display an image using reflected ambient light, and almost no power draw, and OLED so image can light up when light is low. Resolution high enough to see no pixellation even from 1-2ft away. Touch-sensitive, oil/dirt/water repellant. Connected into home network acting like a huge monitor. Have your wall in whatever color/design. Can be a room with a view - whatever view. Can even have live feeds from picturesque locations specifically for the purpose. Video chat like you are in the same room. Run whatever gadgets/apps anywhere on the wall. Want to watch morning news? Put up a 40" TV window in the spot closest to the breakfast table, without bothering the kids 'fingerpainting' or playing some video game in the other corner. Watching a movie? Draw up a screen as large as the wall size allows.

Ray Bradbury described the concept back in 1950 in The Veldt, and later in 451 Fahrenheit, although in a much darker setting.

Remember "Total Recall" where the whole wall was an interactive TV? I think we're knocking on the door of that.

I think there is a concept of "too big" involved here. The 50 to 65-inch rear projections always outsold the 70 to 82-inch models. There was not that much difference in price, I think it was preference.

Not many people have the desire for largs sizes outside of a dedicated Home Theater room, is my belief. I don't think there is any volume of sales beyond 54" or 55" models.

If displays can be made relatively non-intrusive (i.e. flat sheets) so that they blend into a room and therefore have a high WAF, I don't see any reason why larger displays shouldn't become common place in the market. I never had one person over to my place when I had my 136" 2.35:1 screen that said, "that's too big" - it was always "wow that is so cool!" (men and women alike). If the average person could have something around 100" in a common living space that didn't make itself known until it was on, with reasonable power consumption and heat output, and acceptable PQ (which I don't think would be too hard given people's proclivity for cheap flat screen TVs), I see people being quite accepting.

However I don't see a giant 100" screen hanging on the wall with an obvious bezel becoming "mainstream" at any price point.

Most of the people who chime in at threads like this arguing against large sizes are either plants of the industry that had rather make tons of money on smaller sizes OR people who are size challenged themselves.

I don't understand the "TV dominating the room" talk. A flat panel IS high tech furniture and should be a visual focal point. When you enter my front door you see the 42 inch on the dining room wall AND the 65 inch on the living room wall. Walk a little farther and you see the 106" Pj screen...a little farther and two large analog screens plus dual 24" lcd screens. Enter the bedroom and see a 50 inch on the wall. Enter another bedroom and see four different analog tubes lined up.


And I haven't even mentioned the numerous 15-17" digital frames hanging from various walls.

Electronics make for a modern, stylish home!

Yes I am married and yes my wife is terrific

I think this reflects your personal taste rather than mass preferences, and you have a perfect right to it. I'm a geek and like the look of many modern display devices too. But we're talking about the world market here (not just North America) and most people don't read Audio-visual forums and evidently don't share our tastes as reflected in sales statistics.

I think we are talking about the decor shown in the professionally decorated rooms that are shown in the type of magazines that women buy at the supermarket. These magazines can and do show you "media rooms" with all of the electronics and video screens concealed by built-in furniture, usually painted whatever is the wall color.

The typical black/charcoal/silver/etc of A/V equipment is simply not too attractive in the typical white-walled apartment. Decorators like to bring bright colors into such spaces. In my case, my Home Theater room has drapery on one wall that conceals the pull-down screen above a double-wide window. The subwoofer is concealed by a sofa. The A/V equipment is inside a pine cabinet behind solid roors.

With the furniture arranged in the seldom-used conversation grouping around the fireplace, the room looks like a magazine picture. With the screen pulled down and the sofa, love seat, and chairs arranged in arcs, it is a functioning Home Theater.

But to my wife, that is the "Living Room", not a theater. Men have different priorities.

Gary is pretty much right. The notion that somehow something technological is going to make gigantic screens on the wall garner mass acceptance they currently lack is pretty silly.

Intelligent people can have a discussion about how the mainstream TV size has grown over time but those intelligent people would also have to note that the average flat panel is still not as large as the average protection TV was when projection was selling 4 million units/year in the U.S.

And that's not a matter of price, because, well, most of those projection sets were $3000 plus when $3000 is about equivalent to $5000 today. So what this means to me is that early adopters were likely to want large screens and probably still do. That said, in the Rogo house, we'd be hard pressed to accommodate anything larger than 70-ish and our home is very much an average size American home.

While there is probably a niche market for TVs "that big", it wouldn't stun me to learn that 10 years from now, a mainstream TV is around 50 inches diagonal. It's very much about room aesthetic and not about "OMG BIG SCREEN". I should add it wouldn't stun me if the mainstream TV is a bit larger in 10 years, but it would stun me if it was 70 inches. In fact, I'm certain it won't be.

That's why I use front projection in my Home Theater. The projector itself sits atop a high bookcase, camouflaged by other items on display. The screen when retracted is a slim, wall-color case immediately below a drapery rod, not seen at all with the drapes closed, and hardly visible with the drapes open, unless pulled down and in-use, and then it is also the light control for the two windows.

It's a small room with just a 96" screen and 5.1 surround. It may be all I ever have, since we have been in this home 25 years. I watch most stuff on a 46" HDTV with 2.1 virtual surround sound.

IMHO I think the question of whether there is demand for large size TV ie >=60" will be known in 10 months' time

I'd get a bigger set if the budget could handle it. At an 18' viewing distance I need all the size I can get. With newer homes "open space" setups, long viewing distances are becoming more common unless you want your seating in the middle of the room. I'd do a projector if ambient light wasn't an issue.

This doesn't surprise me but just out of curiousity have you seen data on this or is it just your impression?

As somebody who services TV's for a living I can confirm the average size has gone down from the RPTV days. However the trend is going back to larger sets now that they have become more affordable.

I was auditioning a piece of audio gear a couple of weeks back and they had a Panasonic Plasma on one of the walls. It was 100 plus inches and it must be a couple of years old I guess as they had it marked down from whatever the MSRP was to $29k. A lot of money still.

Two things struck me. It didn't seem as huge as I imagined and secondly, they just had a couch no surround sound or anything and it was not anymore than ten to maybe twelve back max and it might of even been less and the picture was just fine from this short distance. Fine as in distance from couch to display. The Panasonic itself looked a little drab.

Maybe because the store is so big that it didn't seem gigantic? Anyway...

I have gotten so use to my 55inch and it just does not seem that big anymore. I don't know if a jump to 65 will help much and 70 seems it might be the new 50

Rick

With 4K and HDR coming, of course people will want the biggest screens possible and something like massive QLED wallpaper-like TV will be perfect for that. The form factor and viewing experience should be so much more advanced and immersive than what's available now, that in 10 years the idea of watching tv on a diagonally small, heavy, slabs of glass will seem ancient and silly. Ancient and silly enough that anyone with a regular flat screen will be perceived as either poor, luddite or both. In other words, it will be a status thing and that will, in part, fuel the mass adoption of massive, printable, light, roll-able-sheet screens.

This depends of higher-bandwidth input. Right now 1080 is your standard cable or satellite signal, and it would look grainy on a wall-sized screen. The problem is that the cameras, studio processing and transmission equipment are hugely expensive. Much of the TV broadcasting industry is just now struggling free of 480 SD.

I've seen the industry sales data a few times. A lot of the stuff is available on the internet if you search enough.

I do believe that screen sizes are creeping back up, but, for what it's worth, I don't agree with the post below that implies people are suddenly going to move to 70-80-90 inch screens for 4k... I mean I heard that argument about HD -- which is a much bigger improvement over SD than 4k will be over HD (in real terms, so please don't inundate me with math... think about the amazing leap from VHS to DVD and then the marginal affect of the BluRay leap).

The fact is most people don't want gigantic screens in their houses. Or they can't have them. Will 60 inch become mainstream? Maybe. The fact that LCD has more or less failed to ship that size in volume for the past 3 years despite the technical capability to do so says no but I'll say maybe. Will 70 become the mainstream size? No. It just won't.

I think the state of the economy has a lot to do with it right now. It's not a good time to introduce megabuck new killer consumer products like the Qualia was 5 years ago. But this is slowly changing so I'm sure that companies are working on new generations of high price (read: high profit) displays with all the mandatory goodies - 3D, multi-color LEDs, full local dimming, internet widgets, wireless etc. - in sizes up to or above 80 inches. Above that I suspect the market will be dominated by new generations of front projectors.

Right now Mitsubishi still makes 82 inch DLPs at quite reasonable prices but they sell only in tiny numbers, so I think that tells us where the dividing line will be.

As to what will qualify as "mainstream"? I'm sure the peak of the Bell curve will creep up but I suspect that 60 or 65 will remain where the tail begins for some time. Anyway, we'll see. The next few years should be interesting.

I'm still nursing along an old Pioneer 1080i 65" RPT that I had hoped to replace with something bigger (and newer) by now. My family room is not compatible with FP with 20 feet of glass doors on the lakeside and kitchen at the back end of the room. At the moment, it would appear the only new displays suitable are the Mitsu 82" or 92" projection sets. I had some hope that 100" laser driven display by HDI would have become a reality, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside. So, I keep hoping for some announcement out of the blue for a really large display that won't cost as much as a new car.

It hasn't happened yet.

Agree that people will not look at large size because of 4k. That's putting the cart before the horse. 4k will come when TV becomes large.

However large size TVs will come not only when there it is technical feasible, but when there is market acceptance and commercially viable. Industry was focused on other things like LED, thinness and 3D past few years. IMHO this year we should finally see focus on large size, starting with 50" going mass market. That would push the I-got-bigger-than-you market beyond 60".