Re: These are not the pixels you are looking for.
"Try quantifying bitrate and encoding system in a manner as easy as 'More Pixels' - it's hard to explain to someone nontechnical (almost all 4k TV buyers will be nontechnical) why their current HD picture looks so bloody awful."
For transmission quality, they could simply use the bitrate in megabits per second, such as 5 Meg, 10 Meg, etc, much like how the quality of downloadable music is advertised, in terms similar to what's used for broadband. Perhaps if someone wants to pay extra for their streaming video service to use a 30 Meg transmission, they can have that option.
Of course, this isn't really all that useful to TV manufacturers, as it's related to transmission quality rather than display hardware. For them, telling people they get "FOUR TIMES THE PIXELS!" is what they're trying to market 4k on, whether or not people will ever see those pixels. Netflix might be planning on offering a 4K stream at 15 Mbps, but compressed Blu-Rays at 1080p already offer twice that amount of bandwidth. The increased resolution might provide a slightly sharper image, but that will only really be noticeable if you sit very close to a large screen. At typical television viewing distances you would need a massive wall-sized display to notice a significant difference, and that's not something everyone needs. The move to HD was a significant upgrade that provided a noticeable boost in quality on even average-sized screens, but 4k's potential benefits mostly just apply to the high end, making widespread adoption unlikely in the near-future.