http://www.xkcd.com/732/

This puzzles me too.

I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new 
receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase 
the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount? 
I don't understand that.

(And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't 
even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when 
it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading for 
the public if they allow only one resolution?)

Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these 
resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not 
moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to 
using a higher resolution, after all...

PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs. 
Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect, 
what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I 
don't understand.

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