I'm not convinced it will ever become the standard. And certainly not next gen.
Hell, there's still pretty much nothing on TV in 1080p beyond some PPV and on demand stuff. All my direcTV HD channels are either 720p or 1080i.
With 4k, you have to have a pretty large set or sit damn close to your TV to see the difference, so it's not going to have the wow factor for the average person than HD did. And I don't think anyone but hardcore videophiles will care about moving from Bluray movies to 4k discs--much less upgrading their collection again.
So I don't know that 4K tvs will sell that fast, nor that we'll see much 4K content anytime soon. Media is moving more toward streaming everything and internet capacity probably isn't ready for 4K given how many people have issues with ISP data caps and streaming HD movies currently (which are around 2GB a pop).
I agree with this. 4k will never be the standard because there is zero demand for it. We still have people out there who havent upgraded to HD yet. On top of that the difference between HD and 4k really isnt so noticable that will make people say "Oooo I must have that" In most instance like stated above you cant even tell the difference.
I wouldnt worry about 4k.
No, 4K will eventually be the standard because there will simply be nothing less in the stores.
There are still people in the US who don't have electricity or indoor plumbing. But they are not the basis for judging whether most people regard these items as necessities or at least standards of living. Those people who don't have an HD display yet? They're out of luck when it comes to the PS4 and X1. These machines only want to talk to displays with HDMI inputs and those are rather rare in NTSC/PAL displays. (You can convert the output to other display standards but how more expense and trouble are going to go to rather than just get a compatible screen?)
There are people out still recording TV shows on VHS tapes. In the eyes of consumer electronics people these are dead people who just happen to have a higher than normal activity level. They also vote in Chicago. Eventually they die for real but the world has already moved on.
The idea that there is zero demand for 4K is utter nonsense. This would be like saying there was no demand for 1080p in 1990. Extremely few people had ever seen it then and understood what it meant in terms of quality. All you could say was that watching TV would be a lot more like watching a movie in the theater and hope their imagination would bridge the gap.
My mother was 81 when I brought home the first HDTV in the house. She appreciated the size of screen and how little space it took up relative to that but it took a while for the difference in image quality to sink in. Until one day she asked me if something was wrong with the cable because all of the channels looked awful. It turned out that instead using the 4xx channel range where our service provider puts their HD content, she had forgotten and chosen the analog 2-99 range. That was the day she really became aware of the difference. The analog SD channels looked as good as they ever did but to her surprise her standards of quality had shifted.
4K will become the standard when the display get inexpensive enough to start crowding out 1080p displays from the stores and somebody shopping for a new screen sees no reason not to get the 50" 4K unit that costs the same or less than the 50" 1080p display he bought 5-10 years ago.
As for consoles, the generation following the one launch ing this year, in five or more years, will have 1080p pretty much mastered to the extent that anything can for real-time interaction, and will make some serious forays into 4K support. Much as you could get perfectly good results with a 720p monitor in the current generation, a 4K screen won't be required but will have real benefits. Then, the generation that comes after that use 4K as its baseline display. It may still be usable with 1080p but severely compromised, like using an Xbox 360 or PS3 with an NTSC/PAL screen.
