And 1080p from a Blu-ray movie is just breathtaking. Go see Pixar's Cars or Toy Story 3 or the Diamond Edition of Disney's Beauty and the Beast--the picture quality on Blu-ray on a 40" or bigger flat screen is just breathtaking....
Anyway, they're about to agree on a standard for 3820 x 2160 super-resolution HDTV--I've read it's so sharp it's essentially like looking out a window. Problem is, it may be years before we broadcasts at such high resolution and also an upgraded Blu-ray standard for disc players.
We will be recording our family videos at this resolution for years before the broadcasters use it or studios sell movies to the general public using it.
The present ATSC broadcast transmission standard yields 19.2 megabits per second on a given RF channel. I’m dubious about making a decent looking moving image of 3820x2160 pixels with that bit rate. Yes, they may come up with an advanced encoding standard (mpeg5, anyone), but it may simply not be possible to achieve acceptable quality with the given bandwidth.
Cable or satellite services may come up with a usable transmisson standard long before broadcast does.
Then again, with the internet and fiber to the house, broadcast TV may be going the way of the dodo.