What's an ideal or respectable size room for HT?

[Anthony P]

1) there is no such thing as ideal or respectable room size, it all depends how many people you want to fit, what kind of seating, size of screen and tech used.

what I mean is
a) HT seats for 3 will be more wide then a sofa and it more wide then a loveseat
b) you want 3' min and preferably 5' or a bit more between the head of the person sitting in the rear most seat and the back wall. (and if they are reclining seats then that would mean in the reclined position) PS, that would also apply to the sides
c) if you have several rows then make sure to leave enough space for people to pass to their seat
d) on a cheap crappy projector the eyes of someone on the first row might be better at 1.5x or 2x the screen width on the other hand with a good projector you might want to be 1x width
.....


2) for audio reasons
- a) there is a door you can close well to make sure the sound does not escape (the last thing you want is "turn it down I am ..."
- b) you want to stay away from rectangles where the wall sizes are relatively the same or close to it(x:x, x:2x, 2x:3x...) 11x11 is a square 10x20would be bad because the length is 2x the width, 12x18 is 2*6 and 3*6, the issue is that they are more likely to create standing waves and null points (i.e. screw up audio because it bounces off the wall in the similar way on all the walls)