Does Size Matter?

Of course it doesn't... except when we're talking about a TV screen. How ridiculous is it, anyway, that we constantly crave a bigger screen. And here's a hint: it's never big enough.

A few years ago, I was sharing a house with an old friend and we decided that between the two of us we could build a pretty great ad-hoc home theatre in the darkened, unfinished basement if we invested in an inexpensive DLP projector and a white bedsheet. He already had a high-end receiver and speakers, and we figured that either of our DVD players would be up to the task. A couple of months, some cash and a serious amount of dusting later, we had our theatre. The screen was massive (we measured it out at about 150 inches diagonal, 16x9) and the picture quality was pretty good, considering.

Here was the problem: after about three months, our eyes adjusted and we simply got used to it. I'm not saying it ever seemed small, but our use of the theatre did extend into overkill territory, particularly when we started watching the Simpsons down there first thing in the morning with our coffee.

I moved on some time after that, and he met a girl with kids and got married, moving into a bigger house. He kept the theatre setup (his new wife's two-year-old dubbed it the "Big Room"), but it was seeing less and less use. It was bothersome to swtich everything on, cut the lights, get situated on the couch, etc. Much more comfortable to just toss a movie on the 27 inch 4x3 TV in the bedroom. It wasn't long after that that the projector's colour wheel died, and he decided not to get it replaced.

I, in the meantime, invested in a 16x9 TV that was smallish (30 inches) but quite heavy and bulky enough, thank you very much. I sometimes catch myself looking at the screen now and thinking how small it is, especially when watching a film in 2:35:1 aspect ratio, but I try to keep those impulses to a minimum. After all, the TV was expensive enough that I'm not going to be replacing it anytime soon, and do I really want to ruin my movie-watching eyes by adjusting to a huge screen when simply a medium-size one will do? It's not the size, after all, that matters. At least, that's what I have to keep telling myself.