Fitting a television and its sound

A television is chosen by the distance between the screen and the sofa, not by the size of the wall it hangs on. For a 2.5 m viewing distance, a 43 to 50 inch diagonal is comfortable; at 3 m, 55 to 65 inch; beyond 3.5 m, 65 inch and upward. The panel technology comes second: OLED gives per-pixel black and wide viewing angles, LED and its QLED variants give higher peak brightness for a bright room, at a lower price for the same diagonal.

Anyone fitting out a living room from scratch, and checking cables, picture settings and running costs before deciding, will find the same ground covered in Italian at Elettronica Papini, a guide to domestic electronics that treats the television, the sound around it and the energy label as one purchase rather than three.

How far should the sofa be from the screen?

The old rule of thumb, a screen diagonal roughly one third of the viewing distance, survives because it still works. In metric terms, multiply the diagonal in inches by about 2.5 cm for a mixed diet of broadcast and film, or by 2 cm if most viewing is high-definition film and the room can be darkened. A 55 inch screen therefore sits well between 2.2 m and 3 m.

Two corrections matter more than the arithmetic. First, resolution: a 4K panel tolerates a closer seat than a 1080p one, because the pixel structure stops being visible sooner. Second, room shape: in a narrow room the sofa cannot retreat, so the diagonal is the variable, not the distance. Measure the wall, then measure the floor, and take the smaller of the two answers.

OLED or LED: which panel for which room?

OLED switches individual pixels off, so black is black and the picture holds its contrast when viewed from the side of the room. It suits a room where curtains can be drawn and where the sofa is not directly opposite a window. Its weakness is sustained brightness: a sunlit room with a south-facing window will wash out dark scenes.

LED panels, including QLED, push more light. They handle a bright room and a daytime audience better, and the same money buys a larger diagonal. The trade is contrast: black levels depend on dimming zones, and off-axis viewing softens colour. Neither technology is better in the abstract. A dim room and a central seat favour OLED; a bright room and a wide seating arc favour LED.

Refresh rate sits alongside the panel choice. Panels run at 60 Hz or 120 Hz. The higher figure matters for sport and for games consoles, and it usually arrives with HDMI 2.1. For broadcast drama and film, 60 Hz is sufficient.

Soundbars: matching the bar to the room

A television's own speakers are sized by the cabinet, not by the room. A soundbar restores the missing low end and centres dialogue. The choice is governed by volume of space, not by the size of the screen.

A small room, up to about 15 square metres, takes a compact two-channel bar of 60 to 80 cm. A living room of 15 to 30 square metres justifies a three-channel bar, which adds a dedicated centre channel and does more for dialogue than any equaliser setting. Beyond 30 square metres, or in a room with high ceilings, a bar with a separate subwoofer and rear speakers gives the only convincing sense of scale.

Channel count is the honest specification. A bar described as 2.1 has two channels and a subwoofer; 3.1 adds the centre; 5.1.2 adds rears and height. Anything marketed as virtual surround is a processing claim, not a speaker count, and it depends on the room's surfaces. Where the room is shared and headphones are the realistic option, open-backed headphones suit a quiet room and closed-backed ones keep the sound in.

HDMI 2.0 or 2.1, and which cables?

HDMI 2.0 carries 4K at 60 Hz. HDMI 2.1 carries 4K at 120 Hz, 8K at 60 Hz, and adds variable refresh rate and auto low-latency mode. If the sources are a broadcast receiver and a streaming stick, 2.0 is enough. If a current games console or a high frame-rate player is in the plan, the television and every link in the chain must be 2.1, or the extra capability is lost at the first 2.0 socket.

Cables are graded rather than versioned. Standard HDMI handles 1080p and 4K at 30 Hz; High Speed handles 4K at 60 Hz; Ultra High Speed is specified for the 48 Gbps that 2.1 requires. Length matters: passive copper is reliable to about 5 m, and beyond that an active or optical cable is the safer purchase. ARC and eARC carry audio back from the television to the bar or amplifier over the same cable. eARC adds bandwidth for uncompressed formats, and both devices must support it.

Reading the EU energy label before buying

Since 2021 the television label runs from A to G, with the old A+ to A+++ grades retired. The rescaling was deliberate: most sets now sit at E, F or G, and an A is genuinely efficient rather than merely better than average. The label states energy consumption in kWh per 1,000 hours in SDR and, separately, in HDR. HDR figures are consistently higher, because the panel is driven harder, and they are the honest number for anyone who watches films rather than daytime news.

The label also gives the diagonal in centimetres and inches, the resolution, and the power drawn in standby and networked standby. Standby figures look trivial, a fraction of a watt, but they accumulate across a household of devices and are the easiest consumption to remove with a switched socket. A larger panel consumes more at the same brightness, so the diagonal decision made at the start of the purchase is also an energy decision.

Repair or replace?

A television that fails out of warranty is an economic question, not a moral one. A failed backlight or power board on a mid-range set is usually worth repairing, and the parts are available. A cracked panel on an entry-level set rarely is, because the panel is most of the cost. The energy label helps here too: replacing a working set with a slightly more efficient one almost never repays the purchase, whereas replacing a failed set is the moment to compare labels properly.

A television picture is built from layers, and the same is true of a watercolour study made in the field. Wash is laid over wash, each one dried before the next, and the mud of an estuary or a ploughed field is rarely a single tone but a stack of thin glazes. The method rewards patience: mix weaker than instinct suggests, let the paper dry, and build depth slowly rather than forcing it in one pass. The same discipline applies to watercolour washes and glazing, where the sequence of layers matters more than any single colour chosen.

Sound carries differently in a room built for speech, and the same holds for a building raised for worship. Where a television is tuned to the acoustics of a small front room, a church interior is shaped around the unamplified voice and the joined singing of a congregation. The order of that hour, the part the hymnal plays and the teaching on grace that stands behind it are set out plainly in an account of inside a Lutheran Sunday service, which follows the service step by step from gathering to blessing.

A television and its sound are bought together, and both draw current for years. The figures on the box are worth reading before the set goes on the wall: power drawn in use, power drawn on standby, and the noise a set makes when it is meant to be silent. The EU energy label pages set out how those figures are measured and what the classes mean, so a room can be planned around a known load rather than a guess. In a small house, that difference shows on the meter.