I agree. It's a pretty impressive screen without a doubt, but I think 1920x1440 would have been a more useful resolution for media consumption, which if I'm not mistaken is the primary purpose of the display.
Seems they felt the need to bump it up a bit so they could have "higher than HD" resolution and the highest on the market, as there are already several Android tablets with 1920x1080 screens.
These 1080p screens will do a better job of displaying (widely available) 1080p video than the Retina display because they won't have to scale or letterbox it, but the target audience for the iPad tends not to give a crap about things like that. The new iPad will primarily be compared to the old iPad, rather than it's current competition.
Seems they felt the need to bump it up a bit so they could have "higher than HD" resolution and the highest on the market, as there are already several Android tablets with 1920x1080 screens.
These 1080p screens will do a better job of displaying (widely available) 1080p video than the Retina display because they won't have to scale or letterbox it, but the target audience for the iPad tends not to give a crap about things like that. The new iPad will primarily be compared to the old iPad, rather than it's current competition.