Thinking of installing 50 inch plasma at high level above an existing fire place mantlepiece.
The bottom of the screen would be at 1300mm above the floor.
Seating would be normal seating position 3500mm away.
Anyone know if this higher than normal position would be detrimental to good viewing?
At present I have a 42inch plasma which is at eye level approx. and I am just not sure what would happen if one was sitting looking up at a screen.

Height does appear a little high, however imminently doable! However, my major concern is the 'fireplace' - @ the risk of stating the obvious;I hope you dont intend using it as the heat will no doubt damage the panel!!

Really comes down to how high you'll be sitting & whether you & yours will feel comfortable viewing @ that height.

Cheers

Chris

Good ergonomics and common sense would dictate that tv's, just like computer moniters, should at or below eye level. It is better for your posture to keep the head from tilting backwards. Even tilting it slightly forwards is preferable. Badly designed movie theatres, where you have to look up at an uncomfortable angle, are fortunately not so common these days.

why don't you make a cardboard cutout and place it in the spot and see how your nec feels when you look at it for a while?

We had some people in the forum before who did a similar experiment to gague if the size of the 42" or 50" was the way to go... I guess the same could apply for positioning??

My father in law has a 42" at about 3.5 m away sitting at around the 1.5 - 1.6 m level... however he also has reclining couches/chairs, which makes it perfect viewing angle when you are laying down/reclining on the fabulous chairs.....

in other words, you have to check the hight based on distance AND your seating arrangements....

thanks all for your ideas
one sees so many pics in the glossy mags,many of them ads, with monitors at hi level that I started to think it was doable.

The bottom of my bezel is about 860 mm from floor level, and the panel is mounted on a tilt bracket at 5 degrees.

IMHO this is a good height, but I'm not sure that you'd want to go a real lot higher.

If you look through the our construction pictures you'll see that we did do what Big-M suggests, and that was to use a mock-up panel to see how we thought it would go.

Austen.

Just like to add that i have a 42inch plasma mounted above a working fireplace mantlepiece. The bottom of it is about 1.2m from the ground and seating is about 3.0m from it.
I have had it like this for over 3 years now and have not had any problems with it, nor has anybody else complained about the viewing angle.
There was room for the plasma to be mounted slightly lower but we came to that height through trial and error, we did not seek anybodys opinion on what height it should be mounted at we just put it at the height that was most comfortable for us.

Cheers,
Andrew

Same here.

Ours is on a entertainment unit that is 1m high, then the plasma is sitting on a stand, so the bottom of the screen is about 1.2m off the ground. We sit about 3.5m back from it.

I am totally used to it, and all our friends reckon it's fine too.

If I had the option though, I would lower it a bit. Though the good thing is you can see it from the kitchen when cooking no problems.

The height definitely won't be a problem if you have no option to lower it.

Here are some other threads that discuss this:

Screen height questions

wall mounting height

Plasma positioning height on wall

Ideal viewing height for plasma

Screen Height

Happy reading!