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Monday, June 26, 2006
By Christina VanGinkel
When it comes to shopping for a new television, I have always assumed that you should shop for the biggest television that a: you can afford, and b: that you have space for. Neither answer is correct I have come to find out, though the second answer is somewhat correct.
With the new LCD and Plasma HDTV's all the rage, who would not want the biggest, most expensive television they could afford. I now know the answer to that is someone in a small home or someone who is going to place the new set in a room that of itself is not that big.
I never gave this much thought, even though I have been fervently campaigning for a new, larger, televisions set for my own home for going on six months now. I never gave it much thought that is, until I stopped at a friend's house for an unrelated matter and she showed me their new, large, LCD television in their family room. The family room is small, cozy, but small. It is rectangular in shape, and they placed the LCD screen at one end of the room. The first thing I noticed was how overbearing the set was in the room, and that the screen actually looked distorted. As it was a model that I have actually looked at in the store, this surprised me. Before I could comment, not even sure that I would have, she stated that they were surprised how different the set looked down here, that they had tried it in their much larger living room, and it had looked better. However, they really did not want the television in their living room, and preferred it tucked down into the family room. She went on to comment that it just seemed to be too close to their seating, but she had tried rearranging things and nothing seemed to work. The set was too big was her opinion.
A few days later, I happened across an article on how to properly hang your new LCD or Plasma screen television. As I casually read the article, I came across a paragraph that referred to making sure that the room you are going to place the set in is large enough for the screen. The author explained that he meant not only big enough for the physical size of the set, but that the set should have room a plenty around it too. The smaller the room, the smaller a size television you should choose.
These two events got me thinking, as I have been pushing for a larger television, at least a 32-inch one. Considering that, our home itself is small and the living room where we would put any new television tiny even, I started to consider for the first time placement of any set we might buy. I might have gone a bit extreme, but what I did was tape together several pieces of paper until I had a sheet about the size that I figured the average 32-inch screen LCD set would be. Within minutes, I realized that I definitely did not need, or want, a screen that big.
I am stubborn though, so I walked around the room, trying my makeshift 'screen' in various places, even moving my couch once to give the room a different layout, but no matter where I placed it, it was just too big. I cut down the paper 'screen' until it was about the size of what a 26-inch screen would be, and discovered a much better fit.
If you are shopping for a new LCD or Plasma screen television, and the room you are going to place it in is not Grand Central Station by any stretch of the imagination, but more along the lines of your typical small family or living room, be sure carefully consider your options. A television can be too large. It can overpower the room, making it seem crowded and even making a beautiful screenshot look distorted because you are sitting too close for the space.
I am going to price some sets in the smaller size that would much better fit our space, and see if one of them would also be a better fit for our budget. I might just get that new television I have been wanting yet!
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