I’ve fallen into the habit of watching most of my stories on my iPad. I’m rockin’ a big ass Pro so it’s very nice. I haven’t fallen so far as to watch anything in bed yet, but at some point in the past I broke my own rule about no video in the library.
I mean, the TV room is at least thirty metres away. And there’s even a set of steps to walk down. So you can see my dilemma. But with Foundation promising some epic big-screenishness I gathered up all my energy and dragged my lazy butt down there.
This isn’t a review post. I enjoyed the two eps I watched and will be back for more. It’s not a perfect show, unlike Ted Lasso. It’s not even a perfect or faithful adaptation - although there are so many narrative flaws in Asimov’s idea-driven opus that a truly faithful adaptation would make for really terrible TV.
I’ll do some thinking on the show after next ep, but watching it on my humungous telly I was struck by something I don’t really understand. Holding an iPad in my hands, the screen fills as much if not more of my visual field as the big honking Sony hanging from the wall. And yet… the Sony feels like it’s the more, I dunno, visually overwhelming experience?
The same way that a real cinema screen does, even if its filling not more of the ‘seen world’ than an iPhone held a foot away.
I’m not sure why, and wouldn’t know where to begin a search to find the relevant research. (I’ll bet there is some).
But it’s made me realise I should really get off my arse and watch more TV on the TV.
What an interesting question. Interesting enough to have a quick look, if not go so far as to replace making dinner or having a friend over to continue watching The Expanse this evening (in my view that's an excellent amalgam of kerbloohy and thinky. Not as thinky as foundation, but then what is). I look forward to others' answers.
These abstracts (both articles are paywalled) suggest that you're not imagining it.
(I'm mildly bemused to see one of them with an NIH logo. But only mildly).
I used terms such as: immersion, screen, size, movie, viewing, angle. Generally hits are about gaming (I picked the above two as being about movies, but on reflection it may not matter). Most hits about TV and movies are guides to set up your home theatre: but they do say something about your basic intuition about viewing angles, but within certain size ranges (say: for various TVs, rather than TVs vs devices), angle of viewing is the thing and one can go too big.
My completely uninformed WAG is that while viewing angle is important and primary between similarly-sized screens, physiological factors such as: depth perception, distance between eyes, visual acuity at different ranges DON'T scale - looking at a phone, your brain knows you're looking at a phone; but the bigger the screen in terms of orders for magnitude, the more it's like the real world.
But I have nothing whatsoever to back that up.
P.S. once upon a time, decades ago, I was a purchasing clerk in the Navy Office and one of my responsibilities was a project to put TVs into RAN (our waterborne one) ships. Buying the things, not the specs. This was of course before flatscreens. Suffice to say, the possibility of TVs being too big (on, say, an O-boat) wasn't something adequately considered.
I watched it on my TV via an Apple TV and found it really disappointing. Just couldn't concentrate on it and by the end of the first ep I kind of had a feel for the story rather than understood it. Second ep didn't really help. I'll give it a couple more, but it would want to blow more stuff up or something to keep me engaged.
What an interesting question. Interesting enough to have a quick look, if not go so far as to replace making dinner or having a friend over to continue watching The Expanse this evening (in my view that's an excellent amalgam of kerbloohy and thinky. Not as thinky as foundation, but then what is). I look forward to others' answers.
These abstracts (both articles are paywalled) suggest that you're not imagining it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25509683/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563211002512
(I'm mildly bemused to see one of them with an NIH logo. But only mildly).
I used terms such as: immersion, screen, size, movie, viewing, angle. Generally hits are about gaming (I picked the above two as being about movies, but on reflection it may not matter). Most hits about TV and movies are guides to set up your home theatre: but they do say something about your basic intuition about viewing angles, but within certain size ranges (say: for various TVs, rather than TVs vs devices), angle of viewing is the thing and one can go too big.
My completely uninformed WAG is that while viewing angle is important and primary between similarly-sized screens, physiological factors such as: depth perception, distance between eyes, visual acuity at different ranges DON'T scale - looking at a phone, your brain knows you're looking at a phone; but the bigger the screen in terms of orders for magnitude, the more it's like the real world.
But I have nothing whatsoever to back that up.
P.S. once upon a time, decades ago, I was a purchasing clerk in the Navy Office and one of my responsibilities was a project to put TVs into RAN (our waterborne one) ships. Buying the things, not the specs. This was of course before flatscreens. Suffice to say, the possibility of TVs being too big (on, say, an O-boat) wasn't something adequately considered.
I watched it on my TV via an Apple TV and found it really disappointing. Just couldn't concentrate on it and by the end of the first ep I kind of had a feel for the story rather than understood it. Second ep didn't really help. I'll give it a couple more, but it would want to blow more stuff up or something to keep me engaged.
Looking forward to reading your take on the first season.
Perhaps there's more to the word 'big' in big screen.