55" in open plan living - distraction!!

Rolling Calf

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So, I recently upgraded 10 year old Sony plasma 32" to an LG C9 55". All well and good. The new TV is fantastic at the things I love, movies and sport. Thing is my living space is large but open plan; kitchen, dining, living room. The TV is visible from pretty much everywhere. While this is great when there are a dozen people over watching the Arsenal game it's not so good when a couple of kids want to watch cartoons from 3 feet away from the screen while adults are conversing 15 feet away on the sofas, cos then the huge Transformer Robots loom over everything and are a big distraction. How can I solve this? I don't want to have another smaller tv in the same space (what's the point?) Also, I don't want to banish the kids to another room.

Why isn't there a 'small' setting on a big T.V? Would be pretty easy to build in you would think. Would also be useful for when I just want to catch up on the news but don't need a twice lifesize head leaning into the room where my partner is having a chat with a couple of friends. Home cinema if you haven't got a dedicated cinema room is turning me off, after all, you wouldn't go to your multiplex to see the regional weather report. Am I alone?
 
So, I recently upgraded 10 year old Sony plasma 32" to an LG C9 55". All well and good. The new TV is fantastic at the things I love, movies and sport. Thing is my living space is large but open plan; kitchen, dining, living room. The TV is visible from pretty much everywhere. While this is great when there are a dozen people over watching the Arsenal game it's not so good when a couple of kids want to watch cartoons from 3 feet away from the screen while adults are conversing 15 feet away on the sofas, cos then the huge Transformer Robots loom over everything and are a big distraction. How can I solve this? I don't want to have another smaller tv in the same space (what's the point?) Also, I don't want to banish the kids to another room

That is one weird request is all I can say.
Either the kids or the adults need to go into another room.
 
Last edited:
That is one weird request is all I can say.
Either the kids or the adults need to go into another room.
Exactly! That's the point - my living space doesn't allow for people to go into another room, it's all one space. To me, my request would be just like the surround sound - full-on Dolby 9.2 when watching an action movie with friends, switched to 2 channel voice priority when watching the news.
 
Give em a tablet or old phone to watch instead of the oversized TV screen? Darned modern kids/grandkids need a screen on to be amused - even if they aren't watching it most of the time.

In my day it was a radio on in the background, if we were lucky; and that had to warm up first. :rotfl:

It's possible that mirroring a screen from a player device onto the TV would allow it to be resized smaller (with caveats about image retention/pixel wear on certain screen types).
 
Give em a tablet or old phone to watch instead of the oversized TV screen? Darned modern kids/grandkids need a screen on to be amused - even if they aren't watching it most of the time.

In my day it was a radio on in the background, if we were lucky; and that had to warm up first. :rotfl:

It's possible that mirroring a screen from a player device onto the TV would allow it to be resized smaller (with caveats about image retention/pixel wear on certain screen types).
Good thinking there. Tablet/laptop could be my way out. Along with bribing dinner for my partner, this tv is proving expensive...
 
What about (Bluetooth?) headphones. I used some today so nobody else was disturbed in our open plan area....
 
I've always thought there should be an option to reduce the picture size, but more to make SD content look better! Or perhaps those days when your eyes are tired and don't want to be scanning a massive screen or have big white bright glearing backgrounds you get on our crazy bright tvs.

The only way I've found so far is to use a computer as the source, and play the content in a small window, and have a black desktop background ....
 
I've always thought there should be an option to reduce the picture size, but more to make SD content look better! Or perhaps those days when your eyes are tired and don't want to be scanning a massive screen or have big white bright glearing backgrounds you get on our crazy bright tvs.

The only way I've found so far is to use a computer as the source, and play the content in a small window, and have a black desktop background ....

That's what I'm talking about!! Expensive, huge TV can only do huge TV? Why? Should have emulators built in - LG OLED does Bush 12" circa 1977 with the colour saturation on max! It would be a winner!

I like the computer as source solution, will definitely give it a try. Thanks!
 
Do check out if your TV screen could be damaged by use of such windowed images on a long-time basis.

We severely damaged a (plasma) screen by having 16x different TV channels matrixed onto it at work (for monitoring purposes).
 
Good point .. though a lot of films are in a ratio that has black bars at the top and bottom, and same with 4:3 with bars at the sides, so not sure why having both at the same time would be a problem?
 
Do check out if your TV screen could be damaged by use of such windowed images on a long-time basis.

We severely damaged a (plasma) screen by having 16x different TV channels matrixed onto it at work (for monitoring purposes).
I'll check for that. Thanks!
 
Thanks for all the responses, I found a pretty good solution - put the tv into Multiview mode, it splits the screen into two viewing areas, each equivalent to a 27" TV. leave one of them untuned (it just shows a blank screen) and the other showing the source I want. Perfect! a small tv in a big tv
 

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