Its future is to be eclipsed by 8K or whatever is up next.   

My future is to stream it and what a beautiful future it is.

Services like netfilix can easily upgrade over time.

UHD bluray's future as a maimstream format... I don't feel so sure about that besides collection purposes and with that I could see that increase in prices thanks to its limited audience.

Streaming is the future because it's going to cut the middle men from the equation anyway. Companies hates sharing profits while customers hate buying new devices just to play new formats.

4K UHD Blu-Ray is to movies what PS4 Pro, Xbox Scorpio and high-end PCs are to gaming. It's for those who want the greatest visual and audio quality from their movies/games. For them the small increase in quality is worth the upgrade. It's probably not a big market, but it will survive no doubt, even if it's only 4k blu-ray collectors who buy them. Those who claim it doesn't have a future has to question the chances of success for the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio and the future of physical media for games as well.
For huge film buffs like myself, there simply isn't a better alternative to physical media. The library of movies available to streaming is very sparse and the quality too low even compared to regular Blu-Rays. And hopefully the library will never reach the level where everything is available to streaming, sorry, but it would kill the film industry if everybody had access to everything for $9.99 a month. And too few would pay the necessary $50-$70 a month.

4K blu-ray looks to be the next Laserdisc.

Older movies, 35mm and early digital movies before a few years ago won't see much benefit from 4K. A well preserved 35mm print resolves to about 3K, yet most of the gains will be in cleaner film grain. Only since a few years have movies been shot with 4k cameras and most are still mastered in 2K. It will be a hard sell to double dip for minor color enhancements.
I hope they make good transfers of the few dozen 70mm movies, those will be worth watching in 4K.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_70_mm_films

4K blu-ray is a much smaller jump than blu-ray was compared to dvd. Smaller resolution increase, much smaller bandwidth and disk size increase (both have about a twice efficient compression algorithm), plus blu-ray already has lossless sound and dolby atmos / dts:x, no sound benefits on 4K blu-ray.
4K blu-ray does add HDR, which was never part of cinema and is only really suited to modern movies shot digitally. Even there it won't be the same representation as watched in the cinema.
The 10 bit wide color gamut and higher color resolution are still pretty noticeable, although not the same eye opener as blu-ray was next to DVD.

I wonder what a good upscaling blu-ray player looks like on the same 4K tv compared to the 4K version of the movie. Reading 4K blu-ray reviews, differences are discussed like DF discusses them between XBox One and PS4 versions. Some more detail here, some better colors there. When I was switching back and forth between the dvd version and early hd-dvd version of Fear and loathing in Las Vegas on a HD ready CRT, the difference already was night and day.

I also wonder what an upscaled blu-ray looks like next to 4K streaming. Blu-ray still has the higher bandwidth after taking the higher compression factor of 4K streaming into account. Logic dictates that it should hold up better in action scenes. I can't stream 4K anyway with the old cable internet infrastructure here.

I had plenty laserdiscs, and I'll get 4K blu-ray in the end. However I doubt I'll be double dipping this time. I'm in no hurry to upgrade this time. I'll let HDR settle first and wait to see if laser projectors come down in price. It's different this time. DVD blown up to 92" had glaring flaws, Soft picture and compression artifacts everywhere. Blu-ray still looks great at that size.

This part puzzles me. Why do studios film in 4K, only to finish on a 2k/1080P digital intermediate, then to upscale to 4k for the UHD release? Would it not be better to finish on a 4k intermediate and then downscale to 1080P for regular blu ray?

Downloading a blu-ray would clog up my internet for about 6 hours, a 4K UHD for 12. One day we'll have fiber too, no plans of that happening anytime soon yet. And if you want the extras and/or lossless sound options you don't have much choice.

I'm still disappointed in 4K blu-ray. Disc size increase is too small, you still need a 2nd disc for extras, and I doubt it will let you start the movie straight away as with streaming. The annoying part of blu-ray is all the unskippable shit before you can finally start the movie. I don't mind the dolby atmos trailer though :)

Because a 1080 image on a cinema screen would be fucking horrifying?

Usually not all elements are filmed in 4K and/or the cgi has still been made in 2K. Not all equipment has been updated yet either. Plus it's always better to downscale to the final product than upscale the lacking elements. So called 4K cameras are actually a bit under, eg 3.5k Arriraw 3424 x 2202 open gate. Add framing and it's really not enough for a 4K product.  You need to film in raw 6k format for the full benefits of 4K masters.

Erm, 4K projectors have only recently been introduced in cinemas, Most still have 2K projectors. Frigging digital IMAX was (and still is in many places) displayed on dual 2K projectors. 2048x1080 is the 2K cinema format.

Sadly, the BluRay didn't even out perform DVD, so DVD is still the most used medium nowadays.
Same will happen with the UHD.

It seems that most people still don't care for HD content at it's finest possible way.
Probably streaming is the issue here. I've checked Amazon Instant Video out and.. uhm... the 1080p stream is not comparable to the quality the BluRay disc can offer. But as I already said, people don't seem to care.

Looking at older movies being upscaled to UHD, this will probably happen at some time in the future when more people have access to the necessary devices.

What I am bothered with is that the 3D feature will be dropped :/

If manufactors threw new stuff into the market and drop it a few years later, then why should I as a customer bother at all?

Now I am looking for a 4k TV for xmas which also has HDR and can do Full HD 3D. That's not easy to find :/