If they separate all the features and charge for each of them, then money!
So as with all the other races to oblivion in our economy, sanctioned encouragedprivate shareholder mandated insatiable greed did it. Same with microtransactions in videogames, "upgrades" to check luggage and reasonably sized seats in airlines, shrinking portions in food service, etc.
The cost of storing and serving 1080p is much, much higher than not storing or serving any content yet they still do that. It's what we're paying them for. Furthermore 'streaming 4k' is pretty compressed already and comes nowhere near the level of bitrate of a 4k bluray.
I would say that was a valid argument a decade ago when 4k came out. I'm completely baffled that we STILL market 1080 as high quality. Furthermore, I would say that was a valid argument if these fucks weren't taking in record profits over and over and over again. It's not a cost issue. It's a greed issue.
Not really. I mean there is, but both bandwidth and storage get cheaper by the day. Delivering 4k content today is probably an order of magnitude cheaper per bit than delivering HD content was a decade ago.