When I say it’s a marketing ploy, you have to look at the history of HDTVs.

The first flat screens were 720P, which looked great because it was way better than 480i that you got with the old TVs.

Then as TVs got bigger, manufacturers moved to 1080p because it was visibly better than 720p.

Then when everyone had a big 1080p flatscreen, there wasn’t a compelling reason to upgrade (again), so manufacturers tried to push 3D televisions, but nobody wanted to wear the stupid glasses, so that effort fell flat.

And that leads us to their next (current) idea to get people to upgrade: double the resolution and call it 4K. The problem is that at standard viewing distances, there’s not much benefit to 4K over 1080P (or at least nothing like the earlier bumps from 480 to 720 to 1080), because the human eye just can’t discern the extra pixels from 10-12 feet away.

If you stand up close, you can definitely see the difference (which is why Best Buy displays their TVs at eye-level where you can stand 3ft away), but from across the living room, it’s hard for most people to see the difference.

This article has a good explanation & chart of the viewing distance stuff: