Absolutely pathetic, ever since the Japanese space agency released the footage from their lunar orbiter I've heard the "HD" thing far too many times, it popped up again in more of my RSS feeds today, this time on more mainstream websites, which was the last straw, so it is time to rant.
The sole reason it seems to me for them to use this term is to get this mentioned on technology websites, and as such is nothing but marketing nonsense.
Let's actually look at the materials that have been made public. We've got some video footage on their website that is a pitiful 480x270 resolution, almost a quarter that of standard definition.
Unfortunately this really bothered me, I was expecting to find some gorgeous video from the spacecraft in orbit around the Moon in 1920x1080 and what I find is a disappointing 480x270 video. With the confusion surrounding HD in the general public at the moment we don't need the Japanese space agency adding to it, coughing up the term HD with such low-resolution video.
Why use the term HDTV in your press release if you're not actually including any 1920x1080 material on your website for people to download? I refuse to count the few still photos that are 1920x1080 they've released, no offence but your typical consumer camera can capture resolutions four times higher than that. The Apollo missions carried still cameras that used 70mm film, theoretically providing much higher resolution than 1920x1080.
Come on, just do the science and stop sounding like Ken Kutargi. You don't see ESA and NASA firing out press releases about images eight times the resolution of HD just because they released a new picture, why? Because those details are irrelevent.
Come on release the 1920x1080 video footage!