In the majority of situations, most people cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. Of course, people who are interested in home cinema type setups ("videophiles"?) will be able to tell immediately.
I think that a major change you will see in the future is the size of the screens. In order to take advantage of a 4k stream a monitor needs to occupy a much larger fraction of your vision than 1080p. So 3 metre screens or projections in people's homes will become more common if resolutions are going to meaningfully increase.
The missing words are "well encoded 720p and 1080p". The difference between bandwidth starved cable and over-the-air HD is amazing. Having a new standard that can encode a better picture over cable or satellite is more than welcomed.
I think that a major change you will see in the future is the size of the screens. In order to take advantage of a 4k stream a monitor needs to occupy a much larger fraction of your vision than 1080p. So 3 metre screens or projections in people's homes will become more common if resolutions are going to meaningfully increase.
http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/