You're probably right about 720 vs 1080. You've go to be pretty close to see the difference on a 46" screen. I believe I read that someone with 20/20 vision has to be closer than 8 feet to see the difference on a 50" screen.
If I was building a home theater setup with a huge projector (or giant LCD), dolby digital (7.1 now?), etc... then of course I want the best quality in everything I can get. A friend of mine has one of these setups and it is amazing.
The above is quite different than the family room TV though. I've seen BRD quality on my 46" TV and yes I can see the difference, but I have to look for it. It's been my opinion for awhile that picture quality and sound at 720p or 1080p streamed is mostly 'good enough' and people now want convenience.
For sure, if you're setting up a proper home theater, the 1080p media will make a difference. For the family room, I agree the difference is minimal. At typical viewing distances, it's probably not even visible.
As for streaming, from what I understand, 720p is actually better than 1080p when streaming, because 1080p streams end up getting compressed to the point that they actually look worse than the 720p equivalent. Fuzziness from stretching the 720p signal is less visible than blockiness from 1080p compression. Blu-Ray obviously doesn't suffer from streaming limitations, though.
If I was building a home theater setup with a huge projector (or giant LCD), dolby digital (7.1 now?), etc... then of course I want the best quality in everything I can get. A friend of mine has one of these setups and it is amazing.
The above is quite different than the family room TV though. I've seen BRD quality on my 46" TV and yes I can see the difference, but I have to look for it. It's been my opinion for awhile that picture quality and sound at 720p or 1080p streamed is mostly 'good enough' and people now want convenience.