many reports out of cedia centered around a number of 8K display showings - what is the point of this? we are NO WHERE close to where we need to be for 4K. what is the point? is this what we have to look forward to short term? is it more for vanity and "because we can" kind of like concept cars?

Numbers and “fake news” are what sells things.
I agree that we are nowhere near ready in content or delivery technology to support 8K, and I can only hope that saner miss will prevail and focus on feature sets that will visibly improve the picture quality (re; Dynamic HDR, support of both Dolby Vision A and B formats, higher Refresh rates and 16 color).

That said, it really does not matter which route the display mfgrs. Take if we do not prepare the connectivity pathways for the future. As painful as it is we as an industry need to push the use of conduit in as many jobs as we can, use the highest quality cables (passive and passive w/repeaters when possible) (fiber stills worries me due t a lack of standards) and communicate clearly with our custermers about the rate of change with the products.

As a manufacturer I am open to ideas on how we get this info out to the buying public, please let me know what we can do to help you prepare for this.

Display companies employ engineers whose job it is to develop a better display. These people are not paid to think about the infrastructure of content delivery, or quality of content production, or any other concerns- they are paid to create a display that is capable of something that the last display they created couldn't do.

For customers with the means to implement a playback system, the 2020 Japan Olympics will be available in 8K.

Buzz, I agree about the localized delivery of 8K, in fact we were told that at least 5 major cities would be able to support 8K for the Olympics.
Again that said, our concern is making sure that we as an industry can supply the needed pipeline for this increased bandwidth.

8 is larger than 4, so mine is better than yours.

In a social world where pats on the back are the daily goal, everyone is looking to put themselves over their followers. Look at my diner, bigger TV, newest phone....

The sheep continue to feed their overlords pockets, and then complain they're hungry.

Didn't see 1 article in any of the main stream news about this year's CEDIA. Oh look, there's a hurricane....

This is proven true by the fact that, starting with S Video, new video technologies were typically introduced with cabling only specified to work over a wiring distance of six feet.

While we may need to "prepare" for the whims of the industry and silly customers expectations, I stand by original thought that 8k is a 100% complete waste in homes.

I have a 75" 1080p TV in my living room. I sit about 14 feet away from it. STUNNING pic, looks 4k to me, no desire to even upgrade that tv to 4k. It will for all intents and purposes look the same. All the proof I need that I dont need 8k nuttin'!

Does this mean I have to buy another copy of Star Wars?

Well, if iTunes is cool they will give you the 8K copy if you already own the non-8K copy like they currently do with 4K copies!

Right now I own a bunch of awesome 4K movies! That I watch on my Pioneer Kuro 1080p 50" from a Gen 3 Apple TV!

Talking to some of the trainers in the industry they have all said that 8K is for commercial use, but of course manufacturers will attempt to gain demand by launching consumer sets... ahead of sources, cabling standards etc etc. You just want to make sure you're not the poor sap left holding the non-functioning cable at the other end of the scenario...
Education will be the key - both during the sales and wiring process.

I like the 8K because I'm a detail freak. At this point, of course, I've only seen very carefully controlled demos. I would not like to pay for this detail with increased motion artifacts. Yes, I'm familiar with the viewing distance arguments, but I probably like to sit closer to the screen than most.

That said, Sony had an interesting demo at CES a couple years ago. They had a 2K, 4K with the full color gamut, and an 8K with the standard gamut. The question was "which picture looks better?", rather than "which picture has the most detail?". It was a hard choice between the 4K and 8K.

This was hard to write and get clear without going over the thousand word limit, so work with me on the details:

The light from your TV goes through your eye's lens and is projected onto your retina. You have a lot of cones (color photoreceptors) on your retina. The little image on each cone is the smallest thing you can perceive. If your TV is positioned so that the image of one pixel of your TV is the size of a cone on your retina, you're seeing the smallest part of the TV image that your eye can resolve. "Resolve" here means perceive as separate, that is, separate picture details.

If you double the resolution both horizontally and vertically, then instead of each cone seeing one pixel per receptor, each will see two high by two wide pixels per receptor. But those four bits of information will only be on one cone, which can only have one output, so each group of four pixels will be averaged to one value. In other words, if you increase the resolution above what you now have, you cannot see any increased detail.

Your TV probably does look like 4K to you, and you're not making a mistake or misjudging anything: a 4K would not look any different. (That's resolution I'm talking about. Other advances in pictures might make the overall image look better, but they won't have any larger amount of detail.)

As long as capture devices get better, so will displays. I agree that transport is a major issue today. Don’t think I’ve ever owned or sold a product that was too good but plenty of good enough.

The 85's and 75's from Sony look great. My LG plasma has the same or better picture for most content...but...4K content on the 85" just blows me away. If I could afford it I would have one.