When I was a kid most people in my neighborhood didn't have a TV in their living room either. It would have been too casual. The TV was in a "den" or "family room" and the living room was the formal room where the adults would gather and kids weren't allowed in it.

I would joke with my parents "why is it called a living room when we can't live in it"

For context, TV at that time meant a handful of channels received over the air, and a "big" screen was 19 inches.

Yeah. Growing up, we had a "TV room" upstairs--sort of an upstairs family room. Guests, meals, most family activities, etc. were always downstairs.

I guess I've kept a similar pattern. My TV is in a little dedicated TV room. I have another wall-mounted TV but it's mostly just a big digital picture frame. [ADDED: I watch TV/movies but I don't really like to mix it in with other activities for the most part.]

Actually it's a debate my wife and I had for a while but our situation became more strange than that. We now have the bed in the living room and we just turn off every power bars when we go to sleep to not have any lights disturb our sleep.

Some of the reason behind is separation of concerns strangely enough. I work from home, we live in a 1 bedroom apartment, and I felt really stressed whenever I would play video game or watch TV while still in the very same space I worked all day. I was basically doing everything in the same 10sqft all day every day. Now, because it's in another room, I feel way more relaxed.

Another plus is now I get the sun up right in front of me from bed every morning and that's just an awesome feeling I didn't get from the bedroom. I believe the bedroom should be oriented south east to get that morning sunshine to wake you up, and we didn't get that before.

That sounds like a pretty workable arrangement in a small 1 bedroom apartment. Bedroom for the office and living room for the bed/everything else works too. I probably would prioritize that work/play separation more than the sleep/tv separation.