I sit about seven feet away. My wife is an eye doctor and I've got 20/15 vision thanks to custom lasik. I know very well everything relating to perception and vision accuracy over distance. I do see and appreciate great 1080 detail from that distance. I just finished each movie and realized there was not one moment in either that I thought "WOW, Look at that great image!". I DO find myself muttering "WOW" periodically when the image is a great 1080 example from DirecTV or an OTA channel. My TV can switch between 1080, 720, and 480 with the remote. It is very easy to see the difference in quality between these choices from my sitting distance. My wife sits about 10 feet away and also often glances up from her work to say "That must be High Definition!" when in fact the image is from a 1080 source and being shown in 1080 on the 40" set.