In the early days of television, all TV sets had curved screens. But unlike today’s curved screen TVs, the early screen edges curved away from the viewer, unlike today’s curved screen that curve towards the viewer –much like the huge movie screen does at your local cinema.

These early TVs had curved screen for a reason. The screen was a big vacuum tube with an electron gun on one end and a viewing screen on the other. The gun basically sprayed electrons on the screen in a regular pattern which in turn created the images that you can see. To keep the distance from the electron gun to the screen equal, the screen had to be curved (actually spherical, except Sony’s Trinitron tube which was cylindrical).

As TV electronics advanced, engineers were able to compensate for the unequal electron distances inherent to a flat screen tube and flat screen TVs became the dominant style.

Flat tube TVs became extremely popular, but not nearly as much as what was about to come: the plasma TV. Finally, there was a TV thin enough to hang on a wall. Customers went wild over them! Plasma TVs were eventually replaced by LCD TVs, but they had one thing in common: a flat screen in a very thin cabinet.

But TV designers wanted something new and more dramatic, and they looked to movie cinema screens for inspiration. Large movie screens typically curve in towards the viewer to provide a more comfortable, more natural experience. Why don’t we make TV screens that curve the same way? Why not indeed!

But our personal experience with curved screen TVs varies by model. Much has to due with the size of the TV. In a large movie theater the entire audience is seated within the curvature of the screen. But in a typical living room with a smaller 55”to 65”TV, at most only two people can be seated within the screen curvature –and they have to be directly in front of the TV. What about everyone else? They’re totally out of the “sweet spot.” In fact, once you sit around 35 degrees to either side of that sweet spot, the image closest to you appears foreshortened compared to the far side. Some viewers find this fatiguing as well as annoying because of the brain’s attempt to compensate for the distortion. Sit even farther to the side, and the screen’s edge might completely block the near side of the image as it curls in front of it.

 

That’s with a smaller 55”to 65”TVs. When you move up to a 70”, 80”, or larger screen size things become much better. Viewers can be comfortably seated in the “sweet spot.” So remember, to get the maximum curved screen TV effect, the bigger the screen the better.