Alright boys. You’ve been saying it for years…”I want the biggest screen I can afford” and then you grunt. It’s only been in the past couple of years that plasmas grew past 50″ screens. So bigger meant you had to buy a DLP TV or LCD projection. If you wanted them in 55 or 60 inches, you needed to be sitting far away or the picture was blurry (especially showing analog TV or anything other than HDTV). But now that plasmas and flatscreen LCDs are growing in size, and video processors are cleaning up the noise that makes an HD picture blurry…Now that there’s some good upscalers to make regular TV look good on the big screen HDTV…Okay, I’m changing my tune. Bigger is very cool.

If you love movies or want to feel like YOU ARE THERE. Get a bigger TV. I have a 55 inch Hitachi plasma living in my living room. I sit about 10 feet away from it and it’s completely the focal point in the room, but boy, I tell ya…turn down the lights and you are in a movie theater. Watch Survivor? You are on the island!

If you are watching high def or even a good DVD (better if the DVD player upconverts to show on HDTV)…you can’t have it too big. But don’t try it with an inexpensive TV, EDTV (with a resolution of 480 p not 720 or 1080), or probably not with anything other than a plasma or high end LCD flat panel (possibly a Sony Bravia LCD). Unless it’s a great picture, you want to move away from the screen. An unclear picture becomes sharper with distance.

Another odd phenomenon is that when I replaced my CRT (fat, picture tube TV) with a flatscreen, my surround sound became more clear, better separated. I’m told by my audiophile friends that it’s because there’s more room for the sound to bounce around the room.

You still may, however, have to talk to your spouse about the bigger is better idea. A huge TV may be disproportionate to a small room. It can overshadow the room so that you don’t feel that you can do other living in it. Don’t care? Just want the theater experience? Go for it.