Quote Originally Posted by Geoffcin
Your inherently wrong there. Your basing your opinion on an idea that all people have similar visual acuity. This is simply not so. Although it's been getting worse, my eyesight is a measured 20/15 with my left eye closer to 20/10. Many people have similar ability natually, and also with optically corrected vision. 20/10 is TWICE the resolution of 20/20, which is what I assume your measurment is for. So taking your measurments and adding in my personal data I could be sitting somewhere between 50% to 100% FURTHER away and still manage to pick up all the available detail.
The standards for viewing are not built around individual eye issues, they are based around 20/20 viewing. So i am not inherently wrong here. Your personal issues are your personal issues, this has nothing to do with establishing a standard viewing distance.

Of course none of this takes into account the temporal aspect of visual observation. Movement, especially fast movement, lowers the brains ability to process detail in real time. So with fast moving action I should be sitting even CLOSER. Studies have shown that in high detail situation that are moving fully 90% of the detail is discarded by the brain. If we take this into account and use your numbers then I should be sitting 90% closer to the screen! That would put me about 1ft away from my 60" screen. It would be quite absurd to sit that close, but at least I would get all the detail. On the other hand, I think I'll stay about~12ft away for now.
Since you have no definition of what is considered fast motion, then I cannot see how your theory would oppose and nullify the standards that are set. This is an air sandwich as far as I am concerned. What is fast motion, define the speed. How does that correlate to moving action on a television screen. Does this indentifiy the outdoors, or watching television. Is this based on movement of both objects, or a single object with the viewer stationary. In other words, How does this "information" fit into television viewing, of which we are stationary, and the object travel to fixed distance defined by the size of the screen?

Without some sort of context, you last paragraph is meaningless. SMPTE and THX came to their conclusions based on testing with TELEVISIONS specifically, not just regular everyday viewing we do outdoors.