I'm thinking about buying a Hitachi 51" widesscreen Ultravision RPTV to replace my Sony Wega 27". My room is small - my eyes will be about 9-10 ft away from the screen (allowing for the 26 in. depth of the TV). Is this too big of a TV for that distance? Most of my time is spent watching DVDs, not TV. I've seen the charts showing TV size vs. viewing distance, but I was hoping I could get some feedback from people with similar set-ups or experience. Also, is noticeable pixellation a problem with RPTVs? I thought I'd read something about that. Sorry if these questions are too newbie, but I don't want to buy the wrong product. I live 160 miles away from the nearest dealer, so returns are a problem.

There's really no way for other people to gauge what will look best for your eyes.

What kind of feed will you be using most of the time? HDTV? DVD? Cable? Satellite? The higher the quality video feed, the bigger the TV can be for your viewing distance.

It'll mostly be DVDs and XBox games through Monster component cables. All I have for TV will be antenna for now, but if it's too bad on the big screen, I can just watch it upstairs (that's where I'll put the Wega).

Not too close. We're right about 8-9 feet from our 65" Mitsu and it feels fine. Don't go by the old rule-of-thumb for older tv's. Esp. for hi-def or progressive displays. No ugly scan lines to see, even up fairly close.

You actually do want to be kinda close to get the laterl field of view to be large. Think about how wide a movie theater screen is when you watch. You don't want to sit far enough away so the tv looks like a little square way in front of you. You want it to have some real width, to let it envelop you a bit.

Which is why I really feel, based on viewing many systems, that the screens around 42" or less tend to look like big tv's, and the 55"+ sets tend to look like small movie screens. There's a qualitative difference in feel.

And then there's the nice front-projector in a dedicated room. One of these days... $^)

With DVD's 51" should definitely not be too big. That's high enough quality.

I have about the same size tv at about the same distance - it'll take some time to get used to, but it's perfect. At first, it'll freak you out when you walk into your living room and see this huge tv beast.

9ft is fine for a 51". I have a 51" at 9ft away, it's perfect.

1 foot is perfect! You feel like you are actually in the picture!

I have had both a 61 inch and 55inch (at seperate times) in my apartment and I was about 7 feet away and had no problems.

It only takes a couple weeks for the screen to "shrink". Especially if you aren't watching any cable/satellite, you should be fine at that distance in terms of picture quality. Now, in terms of personal preference for how far you sit from the screen, no one can answer that for you. But the quality on DVD/XBox will be fine at that distance.

for a 51" tv displaying dvd or better quality sources you shouldn't need to be very far. after all, many people sit 10' to 13' from their 100" front projectors. for good quality sources the general rule of thumb seems to be to sit about 1.5 screen widths away.

considering a 51" screen is only 41.8" wide you would only need to sit about 5 1/2 feet away...so you should definitely be fine at 10'. or you could go with a bigger screen. ideally the screen will take up at least 30% of your field of vision for maximum viewing experience.