We're lucky enough to live in an age with higher quality of video content, but how many of you actually take advantage of the newer formats? Even Pokemon has transitioned to HD after a while- if I'm right the episodes now air in 720p widescreen. (aka. 16:9 aspect ratio) To even see HD content on television sets, you need a device with the capable HD output and a TV with HDMI- the new port for High Definition content. I still know a lot of people that play their Xbox via component cable, even HDMI is available to him- in my experience when you play component-based content on HDTV's, there's a delay between your button presses and the on-screen action, which is a big deal for first person shooters- I played Halo Reach on a HDTV without HDMI and it wasn't that great; I missed a lot of my shots that could have otherwise hit.

4:3 is standard, think a plain square. 16:9 is widescreen, think a rectangle. The difference between 480p and 720-1080p is very noticeable if you actually use your equipment in HDMI.

So how many of you prefer to watch content in HD whenever available, and what sort of equipment do you use?

For the convenience of you guys, I have uploaded several comparison screen shots in .png format to capture best quality, using the game Halo: Reach as an example, quality descending. I recommend you view it in fullscreen.

Ah yes, HD... It's all over the place in my house!

Firstly we have cable TV streaming HD (720p) via an HDMI cable to a large HDTV, also with a Blu Ray player (1080p) connected to the same TV via HDMI.

Then we have an XBox 360 (1080p) connected via HDMI to a smaller HDTV (Where all our games are), and a Wii connected via component cable to take it from 480i to 480p - On our TV the difference is very noticeable, in 480i you can see scanlines very clearly, in 480p the whole screen is nice and smooth. It's not exactly HDTV (More EDTV), but it's still a noticeable difference.

I'm also a pretty big PC gamer, and I have a nice graphics card with 2 HDMI outputs for PC gaming, so I'm also gaming in HD (1080p, but I'd like to go for 2160p with a GPU this good).

I'm spoiled on HD; I can't live without it now. Every TV in my house is almost always in HD (I say almost always because not all channels on TV are high definition), and whenever it's available, and it's not too much of a hassle, I'll ALWAYS pick HD.

Looks like you did make this thread x3 well, I actually do see an advantage in HD! My whole house is HD Tvs

I don't make a fuss over it, but if it's available, I'll certainly use it. Blu-ray and 120 FPS video is just so clear and sharp. I don't really mind the quality when idly watching or gaming, though. A 480p screen and/or cables is fine for me in those cases.

My friend and I were just playing alongside each other, him on an N64 in standard definition (360i) and me on an XBox 360 in HD (1080p), and the difference was so noticeable. His game was blurry, and it was hard to pick things out far away. There was also a lot of noise and the colours were washed out (Granted, that's due to the TV and the N64 - They're both very old). On the HD version it was very crisp, with things far away being easy to spot and the low-res textures and low-poly-count models being much more noticeable. The framerate was also much nicer (Albeit not 100Hz, but 60FPS is much nicer than 23).

Ah, I have my Xbox 360 connected with an HDMI cable to my Blu-ray player, which is connected with HDMI to my 40" HDTV.

The HD is extremely noticeable when standing close to the screen (especially when playing video games, where it renders it sharply in the first place). There was quite a difference when I started up my GameCube after playing the 360 for a while.