Even removing the issue of cost there's still the reality that modern video content is 1080 vertical lines. Broadcast (OTA, cable, and satellite) has pretty much entirely standardized on 1080i. Both competing plastic formats (HD-DVD and BluRay) are standardized on 1080p. Any device which can't deal with modern content without downscaling and removing quality is already obsolete and will be short-lived in the marketplace no matter how shiny it is on the outside. The industry has already painted the lines in the road taking us through the next decade and they're 1080 pixels apart, not 720. When consumer bandwidth catches up with HD media, or when Apple starts shipping desktops with HD-capabile drives inside them the 720p limit of the ?TV is really going to be a pain in the ass.