You are making things more complicated than they really are. If your TV can accept a 720p signal, there is no problem at all. If you are playing a 720p game like Resistance, and your TV is a native 1080i/p display, the TV will simply upconvert the 720p signal to the native resolution. No...
The fact they haven't shut it down yet I take as a bad sign. Sounds like they are just taking as many orders as they can get - no way they will be able to fill them all.
Cheapest would be a youth hostel. There is a website for all of them in japan but I don't remember what it is. Google can help you with that. Hostel will be your cheapest option by far.
Second best IMHO would be Love Hotel's. The only catch - you can't check in to most of them until 10:00pm...
You guys need to calm down and realize that this stuff is still running on beta hardware. Even developers showing off games at e3 don't have final video cards yet - just a stopgap (which don't even have the 3.0 shaders) and an emulation piece from microsoft that estimates what the final frame...
Keep in mind the 2000 more will buy you a car with a full warranty, 45000 less miles, and the peace of mind that some street racer kid didn't own the car previously.
The factory Acura warranty is only good to 4 years/50,000 miles so you only have 5000 miles left (unless you are buying an Acura...
IGDA does a survey every year that will show you average salaries. Search the web for it.
As for becoming a designer, they are the hardest position to come by and to get in as someone green off the street would take a miracle. A better choice would be to start out in another position like...
It depends on the store and the employees working really. If you look around the net though, you will find lots of people who have had Sears pricematch internet only retailers.