Planning: Media room distances

I save a lot of clippings.  When flipping through magazines and catalogs, I will tear out pages when I think they have good ideas or advice that I might need later.  Consequently, I have a binder that is full.  I'm in the process of digitizing most of it, since it's so much easier to search through iPhoto or Picasa.*

Anyway, while going through my binder, I came across a buying guide in InStyle magazine dated from December 2003.  It gave advice on shopping for a home media center.  Most of it was comically outdated; recommendations for rear projection tvs and cabinets for VHS tapes.  (haha... we were so primitive in 2003!)   But it did have a useful tidbit about the distance between the tv and the viewer.

[InStyle magazine December 2003]

I thought this was the most useful way to look at it:

[(Width of the tv) X 2 = Distance to viewer]

So if you have a living room where you'll be sitting six feet from the tv, then the tv should be three feet wide, max.  Or if you have a 30" tv (which means the tv is actually 26" wide, since tv dimensions are measured diagonally), then you should be sitting at least 52" away.

*It actually takes a while to scan and tag everything, so I'm not really sure how much time I'm saving.  I have a feeling most of my organization projects are like this; a total wash.