Ever since HDTV's first came out, HDTV manufacturers have been trying to find the "next big thing" that will help them sell lots of new HDTV's. Pretty early on, they decided it would be the refresh rate. Most early releases had a 60Hz. refresh rate. They then decided if 60 is good 120 is better. Manufacturers then jumped all over one another trying to come up with a faster and faster refresh rate until you had some sets with a 720 Hz. refresh rate. There was just one problem. The vast majority of customers couldn't see a difference between a 60 Hz, refresh rate and a 720 Hz. refresh rate, so the consumers just bought the cheaper sets. The race to the highest refresh rate failed.
Then came the SmartTV features. We'll make a Smart TV that lets you surf the web, use Netflix, etc. and build it right into the HDTV. This will sell a ton of sets. But then along came the Smart Blu-ray players and Roku boxes that were cheaper and in many/most cases better and SmartTV features became less of a selling point. If you have a Blu-ray player, SmartTV, gaming console, and a Roku you'd have four ways to do the same thing wich is kind of overkill.
Then it was 3-D. This was going to be huge! Go back three or four years ago and pretty much every HDTV at the CES was a 3-D HDTV. They had a brief surge in sales, then people got tired of the glasses and the 3-D craze is now pretty much dead.
Now, the manufacturers think the 4K sets will have people throwing away thier old sets and replacing them all with new 4K HDTV's. There's just one problem. For the vast majority of viewers using "normal" sized sets at normal viewing distances, there's absolutely no visible difference in picture quality between a 4K and a conventional HDTV. It's only when you watch a really big screen from a very close distance using a 4K source that you can clearly see a difference. There is no 4K cable or satellite signal. No over the air 4K signal. No 4K video disc. (They're reportedly coming in a couple of months.) If you want to watch something in 4K you have to download it using a pretty high speed (10 mbps or higher) Internet connection. Sure, that's convenient.
Will consumers want to give up watching live programs live and download everything to take advantage of 4K sets where they can't even see a difference in picture quality? I doubt it. I strongly suspect 4K sets will once again be a short-lived marketing gimmick to try and sell sets that fails, and soon find itself abandoned a few months/years down the road.
Technically, a 4K set is superior to a conventional HDTV, just as a Bugatti Veyron is superior to a Ford Focus. But if all you need is a car to run errands and not go 250 MPH, you're generally better off buying the Ford Focus. If all you want from an HDTV is to turn it on and watch cable/satellite/over the air programming and/or DVD's, then a conventional HDTV is all you need. In the vast majority of cases you won't be able to see the difference between a conventional HDTV and a 4K set, despite the marketing claims. If the manufacturers can get the cost of making/selling 4K sets down to the same level as conventional HDTV's then you're apt to see people buying them, but right now, there's no real need to buy one unless you've got to have the "best" of everything whether you can see a difference or not.
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