Chad,
It depends on whether you care about stereo music. If not, and assuming you use a center channel, let the video consideration be your guide, say 2 to 3 times the image diagonal, but I'd prefer 6' (2 X) rather than 9' (3 X ) for a 36 XBR.
In my experience, good sound is much easier to achieve for movies than for music. My Sony ES receiver was fine for movies, but lacked transparency and openness for music, so I returned to my high-end separates, and moved the receiver to a secondary system.
db
It depends on whether you care about stereo music. If not, and assuming you use a center channel, let the video consideration be your guide, say 2 to 3 times the image diagonal, but I'd prefer 6' (2 X) rather than 9' (3 X ) for a 36 XBR.
In my experience, good sound is much easier to achieve for movies than for music. My Sony ES receiver was fine for movies, but lacked transparency and openness for music, so I returned to my high-end separates, and moved the receiver to a secondary system.
db