Why is 8K the next step?

[Computernaut]

7680x4320 or 8K seems to be the next major resolution to hit the mainstream, 8K monitors, 8K TVs, Display Port 2.1. It's still a ways off, but again, it seems to be the next big thing.

Here's what I find so strange: 8K is 4x 4K, 4K is 4x 1080p, and so on. Parallel to this line is the other less common stream, 1440p is 4x 720p, 720p was 4x 360p, etc. In terms of pixel count, the sequence goes like this 360p, 540p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 4K - It alternates between streams, this actually makes a lot of sense. My question is this, why is the next step 8K? wouldn't it make way more sense to go for, oh I don't know, maybe 4x 1440p? 2880p would continue to follow the (until now) general trend of alternating sequences. Doesn't this make more sense than trying to make the huge leap to 4x an already crazy pixel count? 4K has 8,294,400 pixels, 8K has 33,177,600 pixels; 2880p would have 12,441,600, this would make it a good middle step... right? It is possible that we've seen the end of the (admittedly less common) sequence of resolutions, or could 2880p come along later?

[Eighjan]

TV's & PC monitors don't follow - but seem to inter-adopt - the same sizing trends.

 

4K is still in it's relative infancy for PC's, so it'll be a while yet before things get too much bigger.

[PlayStation 2]

I don't think 960x540 was ever a common resolution in anything barring the PS Vita and certain Xbox 360/PS3 games. Same with 640/480x360, that never particularly happened outside of 80s PCs. 

I mean, if we wanna talk about PC monitors in terms of resolution jumps, we've went from 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 to 1280x800, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, then down to 1360/1366x768, 1600x900 and 1920x1080. 

TVs don't really follow that pattern, though; we generally went from 720x480 (NTSC) to 1280x720/1920x1080 to 3840x2160. 720x480 doesn't really cleanly scale to 1280x720 or 1920x1080, much less 3840x2160. 

 

I guess my point is lost in translation, but tl;dr upping resolutions isn't exactly linear in any space. Don't think about the math and everything is just fine.

[SolarNova]

8k isnt the next thing.

 

4k still needs to become mainstream before 8k even thinks about coming in.

Then 4k high FPS needs to be more common

then 2160p ultrawides need to be more common.

 

And ofc the GPU power needs to be available to push those resolutions.

 

8k really isnt going to be mainstream for a very long time.

[Doobeedoo]

4K still has a long way to go, it's barely existent in mainstream, let alone most don't have near hardware to run it lile 120fps. 8K is double res jump content wise and pixel density wise for larger monitors will be amazing. Gaming, yeah...