To illustrate my fascination with science and weird thought experiments, here's something I thought of today. I've wondered about this question before, but today I actually took the time to work out a practical experiment intended to find the answer.
The question is: What is the resolution of the human eye?
In order to look for an answer, we first need to clarify exactly what we mean by "resolution". After all, the human retina isn't rectangular, and ordinary definitions of dot pitch don't really apply. As I see it, in this context the answer can be expressed in two ways. Given that we define a pixel as the smallest distinct visual unit the eye can perceive, the answer can be expressed as either the number of pixels over the diameter of the field of vision, ppØ (Ø being the mathematical symbol for diameter), or as the number of pixels across one degree of the field of vision, pp°.
First we need to establish how wide the FOV actually is. This is done by having the test subject stare at a fixed point straight ahead, then place a distinctive object in his FOV and move it sideways until it disappears from view (remember to move it to the side away from the subject's nose). Simple trigonometry will get you the angle between the object and the line the subject is looking along.
Next, we place a white circle of known diameter against a black background and place it directly in front of the subject (the attached drawing is deliberately misscaled to make drawing the setup at all possible). We now move the circle and background directly away from the subject until he reports that he can no longer see the white circle (if the Earth's curvature prevents this, use a smalle circle). Slowly move the setup towards the subject until he reports that he can see the circle again. Again using trigonometry, knowing the radius of the white circle will get you the arc of vision it takes up at that distance. For the purposes of the experiment we use the radius of the circle rather than the diameter, as well as only the outer half of the FOV in order to eliminate any inconsistencies introduced by the influence of the subject's nose on his FOV.
Now all that remains is to calculate the actual resolution values:
(Av / Ap) * 2 = X ppØ
X / (Av * 2) = Y pp°
And finally, the question is answered satisfactorily. This information will be useful to future designers of visual technologies such as monitors, head mounted displays, AR overlay contact lenses, etc. After all, there is little point in making pixels smaller than the human eye can perceive.
Having thought all this out, I now turn to Wikipedia (doing it beforehand would be cheating, and would also take all the fun out of the exercise), and as it turns out, others before me have studied this in great depth. [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Visual_acuity]Here[/URL] you will find an explanation of the subject. I must say though, that my experiment attempts to determine another kind of resolution than the one described there. Rather than distinguishing black and white stripes as individual stripes as opposed to a field of grey, I would like to know how wide (in angles) a single white stripe can be destinguished against a black background. In other words, I'm asking not how small objects you can tell apart when they're right next to each other, but how small objects you can see at all.
[/geek] :-D

Dunno if this was in the Wikipedia article or in the diagram as I didn't bother looking at them, but I didn't see any mention of it during my quick scan of the post.
If we were to compare the detail (not exact dot pitch) captured by the human eye to a digital camera, we'd apparently fall in the range of 10-12 Mpixels, and that's without adding the optical zoom (effectively narrowing the camera's FOV, same idea as using binoculars), thus if you get a camera with a higher pixel density, you'll capture more detail with it than the human eye can see.
Because of how the human eye works, light is much easier to see against a dark background than the other way around, since, well, darkness is simply the absence (or a lesser number of) of photons hitting the eye from a certain direction and we're built to detect photons, not the absence of them.

Head = kaboom

Your calculations don't take into account the fact that we have two eyes, and that the brain combines the signals from both to produce even higher resolutions.
We can also move our eyes around quite rapidly. This effectually gives us a larger FOV, and the total megapixel amount has a nonlinear dependence on the FOV.
Hence, the combination of two eyes + brain assembles a much, much higher resolution image than is possible using the retina of one eye alone. The actual megapixel value for human vision, taking this into account, then depends mainly on the FOV. The human eye can see a large field of view, close to 180 degrees in fact.
Taking that into account, assuming a maximum limit value of 180 degrees FOV, you would get a whopping 1296 megapixels for human vision. Certainly not 10-12.
On the other hand. we only perceive a cone of about 3-5 degrees of the total FOV as sharp vision.

Apparently televisions are late to the party, as our eyes have always been capable of producing HD-quality visuals.

With the appropriate drugs.

I'm short-sighted.
My dad's long-sighted...
calculate for this, too?

That just means you have big ears.

You know what they say about guys with big ears...

They smell of earwax?

Not higher resolutions--depth perception. Whole different thing, but very useful.

Smell AND taste!
Also they have good peripheral vision. The people with the ears that is, not the ears themselves

Because they can see their ears? That are fluttering about in front of their face?

No. HIgher resolution also. Although resolution is a very ill-defined concept when talking about the anatomy of the eye, because the eye is not a digital camera and a few billion years of evolution lie behind it's function. Better to call it higher detail. You don't see half as much detail in a scene with one eye closed, you actually see far less than that.