Going beyond an HDTV

Everyone seems to be going gaga over the fact that the new 3rd generation iPad has more pixels than an HDTV, but these same people seem to forget that this is nothing new. My 2010 iMac has more pixels too.
2560x1440

The new iPad has a resolution of 2048x1536, it's height is greater than the iMac but when viewing movies what you really want is a better width. In the case of movie watching, this is where the iMac shines.

Yes, the new iPad display is impressive, but we've seen more impressive displays in the past. I for one love watching my DVDs on my iMac (as opposed to my HDTV) because the letterboxing is less. There are some that will argue that DVDs and Blu-rays are at a fixed size and they don't scale to larger displays (thus their argument for not wanting to buy a newer 21:9 HDTV; current HDTVs are 16:9), but you really do notice a difference when watching on an iMac with larger resolution than a standard HDTV.