In the world of home cinema screens, bigger is most definitely better.
You can have the best-performing display in the world, but if it’s the size of a postage stamp, it’s not going to deliver the scale that’s essential to cinematic satisfaction.
Until fairly recently, someone looking to build a brilliant home cinema really had just one option where their display was concerned: it had to be a projector (with a proper projector screen, of course).
Now, I love projectors. I fully subscribe to the romantic notion that there’s something almost indefinably cinematic about a projector.
It’s partly down to the slightly softer, warmer picture that you get from a projector, of course, but that can now be replicated, to at least some degree, by the best TVs and their Filmmaker Modes (or equivalent).
What a TV can’t replicate is the charm of that beam of light flying over your head, or the little dust fairies that dance about within it. That’s real cinema, isn’t it?
A lack of black
But I’ve also got issues with projectors, particularly those at the sort of level that I could afford.
The biggest and most obvious is the lack of black depth. Even the most accomplished of sub-£10,000 projectors falls a long way short of recreating proper black.
I’ll admit that this isn’t terribly jarring when watching a movie that fills the screen, but with so many different aspect ratios in modern movies, it’s impossible to avoid black bars without regularly faffing with projector screen masking.
I’m aware that there are automatic systems for such things now, but the cost is ludicrous.
There are other compromises that are baked into living with a projector, too – at least unless you have a dedicated home cinema room, which I unfortunately do not.
The most obvious of these is relatively weak picture performance in any sort of ambient light.
Sure, projectors are getting brighter and therefore better at contending with living room lighting, but they’re much more compromised in such conditions than a good TV is.
Then there are smaller issues: most projectors still lack the most advanced gaming features and HDR format support that are de rigueur with TVs, and cabling can be an issue, with projectors often having to be sited away from source components.
The TCL effect
All of which goes to explain why the emergence of super-huge TVs has been so appealing to me, especially now that the performance-per-pound ratio has become so strong.
It’s the 98-inch TCL C7K that really turned my head.
Here was a huge Mini LED TV with black levels and brightness that really no sensible projector could match, with a fully featured smart platform and a complete suite of next-gen gaming features. And all for under £2500.
Now, some, and I actually include myself in their number, would argue that 98 inches isn’t quite big enough for truly spectacular home cinema. It’s good news, then, that TCL also produces a 115-inch version of the C7K.
I can’t vouch for the quality of that version, because we can’t actually get it through the door to our test room (yep, we’re working on changing that), but the foundations are there for it to be just as great as the 98 incher, only truly cinematically spectacular.
Admittedly, there’s a big jump in price from the 98-inch to 115-inch versions of the TCL C7K, but, at £7500, the 115 incher still looks like great value for a screen that size.
Yes, there are plenty of excellent projectors available for that sort of money (stay tuned for our upcoming review of the Sony Bravia Projector 7, wink wink), but none that overcome my general reservations.
Giant screen perfection
All of that said, while the TCL 115C7K is what I would spend my money on if I were buying a giant display right now, it’s not the home cinema screen of my dreams – that would be a truly huge OLED, or perhaps even a Micro LED set.
OLED TVs currently max out at 97 inches, though, which, as we’ve established, might not be quite big enough for a super-sized home cinema.
It’s also been suggested (though not verified) that OLEDs larger than 97 inches might be beyond the realm of feasibility based on the complexity of manufacture and subsequent failure rate.
The 97-inch OLEDs that do exist are already prohibitively expensive, anyway – £25,000 for the LG G5, which is currently the cheapest available.
Right now, if you want a TV larger than 100 inches with self-emissive pixels, it’s going to have to be a Micro LED model. And if you thought that 97-inch LG G5 was pricey, bear in mind that I’ve never seen a 4K Micro LED set available for under £120,000.
If you’re lucky enough to have that sort of budget, more power to you – the home cinema display of my dreams can be yours.
The rest of us will, as ever, have to choose between two sets of compromises. And, for me, that would now mean going for a super-sized Mini LED TV rather than a projector.
MORE:
These are the best TVs you can buy right now
LG's gargantuan 136-inch Micro LED display promises the ultimate luxury home cinema experience
Read our TCL 98C7K review
