For one thing, cell phone users abroad don't pay for incoming calls. TV display standards are higher everywhere else (we wuz furst, that's why.) Gummint decision making is more efficient, believe it or not, in those countries we like to dismiss as "socialist". A decision is a decision, live with it, mofo, no lawsuits, no lobbyists. We in the U.S. tend to consider everything a Consitutional issue and are willing to wait for the 9 high priests in black robes to tell us what's good and what isn't. Is vanilla ice cream good? Let's file a lawsuit to find out!
One of the reasons cell phone technology took off so fast in those socialist countries was because the government ran the land-line phone companies into the ground. Making a phone call was an adventure for people with a lot of patience. When the cell phone was invented, everyone bought one just so they could have decent phone service.
But foreign cellphone customers do pay a fortune in per-minute charges to use their cellphones, especially using some of those 3G features like streaming video and audio. You should see how much T-Mobile charges for their GSM cellphone service in Europe.... 
By the way, I've checked up on the type of HDTV service starting up in Japan and Europe and most of them are using the same resolution standard used in US HDTV, namely 1080-line interlaced scan and 720-line progressive scan.