Wherever I go these days -- homes, bars, restaurants, airports, hotel rooms -- I see beautiful flat-panel TVs displaying awful, distorted pictures. Yet no one seems to notice, or care. I feel like a guy spouting off about the emperor's new clothes, except this emperor's problem is that his wardrobe doesn't fit.

Why should anyone care? And what does it have to do with movies? First things first: Why it happens.

American...