I believe with the current/recent crop of Processors and AVRs we have reach something of a plateau in Atmos and DTS:X. The WAF and even perhaps generally, are not disposed to endless arrays of speakers in the living room. Dedicated rooms will always have different priorities. For the living room however, it is probably becoming the domain of the bars, wireless surrounds and other less intrusive solutions.
Yes we will have eARC, Hdmi 2.1 and beyond with potentially higher frame rates. However sonically there does not seem much on the near horizon and attempts to move beyond 4K will be prohibitively expensive for the foreseeable future. eARC is possibly a blind alley since it can already be subverted by dongles/devices using the existing 2.0a/b connections. We might see improvements from the likes of Dirac and other room correction alternatives, but again unless it is a recognizable improvement there will not be a great demand.
For myself I am much more concerned by the content quality and the tendancy, like previously with music, to see the spectre of low quality/bitrate consumption resurge. Disney in particular I view as a current offender presenting a sub par experience sonically on its recent blockbusters. I worry that OK is good enough and that since some regard watching on a phone/tablet as HD/UHD we all get to suffer the consequences.
There is a place for streaming content, but if it becomes the only option then I fully believe this is a bad future and one a decade or two later we will come to regret. Physical ownership is not the same as a cloud store subject to the whims and vagaries of business acumen and copyright holders.
As always, other opinions are available
