Get it? "High" horse? ...yeah.

Anyway, two things.

1) I'm not saying you haven't, but have you ever watched standard definition television on a big display? 60 inches or so? It looks like crap. The resolution you need completely depends on what screen size you have, and how close to it you're sitting. On small tvs, you cannot physically tell the difference between SD and HD. Get something a little bigger, and the difference is marginal. Those who have really big setups, though, can see a pretty huge picture difference. HD absolutely is wasted on some people/setups, and the marketing hype surrounding it is absurd, but the "technology" (if you can call it that) is not meaningless. If you want something to look good on a big display, you need a higher resolution, and that's pretty much the end of it.

2) He specifically said (multiple times) that he doesn't see a quality difference.

"The only differences that I've seen are the picture is brighter and the volume is lower."

"I tried flipping back and forth between Stargate Universe and Caprica a few times and just noticed the difference of brightness and sound."

If you have some insight that allows you to determine that he does, in fact, see a quality difference, and just doesn't care, then that's great. The rest of us are working with what he gave us, though.