Originally Posted by Martian

That's actually a good point.

There's a widespread and erroneous belief that bigger is always better; in fact, the appropriate size depends on your living room. The rule of thumb is that the width of the television should be no more than half the viewing distance, and no less than a fifth. For matthew330's 36 inch television, that gives the optimal range as being somewhere between 63 inches and 157 inches. That gives us about 5 to 13 feet, but unless you're one of those people who has to sit at the very front or back of the cinema we can probably discard the extremes and say that for most 7 to 10 feet will be the ideal.

Baraka_Guru's 24 inch television, on the other hand (which is equivalent in size to a 720p broadcast on matthew330's television displayed pixel-for-pixel), has an optimal range between 42 inches and 105 inches. Again throwing away the extreme edges, we're probably looking at 5-8 feet being optimal for most folks. If we use the overlap of these two ranges, we can determine that matthew330 should be sitting somewhere between 6 and 8 feet away from his television in order to get the best viewing experience from both resolutions.

If your couch is 10 feet or more away from your couch, I'll concede that a 720p broadcast on a 36" television is probably less than ideal, although being suboptimal does not by any stretch mean unwatchable. Then again, I suppose it comes down to personal preference. Do what makes you happy.

You ought to be able to stretch the 720p broadcasts with no distortion, since it's the same aspect ratio as 1080i.