The Xbox 360 has gotten a lot of ink for kicking off the "HD era" for game consoles, but now Sony is claiming the the true start of the high def era won't be until the PlayStation 3 ships next year. The 360 supports a higher baseline resolution - at least 720p and, in most cases, native 1080i - than the original Xbox, which had more high-def games than the PS2 and GameCube combined. Just not the high-end 1080p, which Sony exec Phil Harrison terms "the true definition of HD," adding: "So it's really premature to be talking about the HD era." Phil has a point: The PS3 will offer 1080p for games (though it's not known yet if this means all games) and movies, thanks to its next-gen Blu-Ray drive, while the 360 only plays standard DVDs at a lowly 480p. Of course, only the newest TVs support 1080p, so you may not even care about this issue for a few years. Microsoft revealed it has no plans to offer a 360 with an HD-DVD drive in the next year. Also, it seems that its ATI graphics chip offers built-in support for 1080p that the Xbox team chose not to tap. Does this mean it might be added later through a software update. FYI- With HD, bigger numbers are generally better, but your best choice depends on your TV's native resolution. Also, the "i" is for interlaced, and "p" is the superior progressive scan...
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