Show us the other walls. I like to place a TV on an adjacent wall if possible, and arrange the seating to take advantage of two focal points.

Agreed. Fireplace would look strange with cut-down mantel, and you risk heat damage to the TV. Looks like there might be a wall to the left...

Ideally, the center of your screen should be eye level. This is still pretty high.

Take the mantle and surround off (carefully) and resell it! It is beautiful, and exactly what someone else is looking to add to their living room. You could also get some extra money for your new fireplace.

Your tile surround is looking slightly dated anyways, and you could avoid doing a ton of patch work by just tiling up to the ceiling. Your fireplace isn't that tall anyways, so you could chose where the TV hangs then. to avoid heat ruining the TV overtime, a smaller decorative mantle could be added in-between!

It is a beautiful mantle and a lot of work to modify it (and it still might not solve your problem!), so I would be open to other placements. Is there another room in the house you could watch tv more comfortably? You could still use the speakers for music. I know some find it an unusual suggestion to not have a tv in the living room, but I find it quite wonderful. We talk more, read more, relax, listen to music......I have zero desire to have a tv in there; I don't miss it at all. But we have downstairs family room with a couch and tv, so it works. Without the family room to hang out in, there would be no other place to put a tv.

Although it's still a bit higher, I think grover's rendition is better than the current situation. The mantle is still in proportion and it gives some breathing room at the top of the t.v. It looks as though your viewing distance is far enough away to be comfortable.

One word of caution (yes, even with a gas fireplace), you'll want a "barrier" between the fireplace and the TV. We opted for a lower mantel ourselves, since above the fireplace was the ONLY place in a room full of windows and open-concept space to put the TV -- and then I had a piece of thick glass made to extend the mantel by 2" which was just enough to protect the electronics from the heat.

Get a Mantlemount... these things are amazing. You can easily pull your tv down to eye level for viewing then place it back up for display! Mantlemount.com

Looks dumb AF - lol...

nobody with any decoratio sense OR TV quality would ever use a mantle mount.

looks trashy not to mention the big gapping fireplace under the viewing focal point. Lol

Better to switch walls with a flat mount or a corner with a swivel mount and arrange furniture accordingly and buy items that give the fireplace pop

What looks dumb though? When you want to watch a movie or something important, just pull it down. When you're done, push it up. What is actually visible that looks "trashy"?

What if you want to watch something with the fireplace on?