When Windows 8 shipped, Microsoft was dinged from multiple corners for its lackluster display scaling and multi-monitor support. Some of these issues were patched up when Microsoft released Windows 8.1, and the company is apparently reaching even further with Windows 10, which will launch with support for up to 8K resolutions in the box.

This news comes from Microsoft’s WinHEC presentation last week, where the company discussed its plans with content creators and media companies. Most of the focus, as you’d expect, was on 4K and UHD (also referred to as UHDTV 4K, to distinguish it from DCI 4K, which uses a resolution of 4096 x 2160).

Still, the nod to 8K in this presentation isn’t the only work Microsoft has done to support the future resolution. Last year, Russian website PCPortal found icons and checkboxes that are up to 768 x 768, a resolution that would allow for 4K and 8K resolutions to scale comfortably, even on small screens.

Baking these kinds of features into Windows 10 is a smart move for Microsoft. The company is well aware that its operating systems tend to be used for 5-7 years these days, particularly in the corporate desktop market. Laptops and enthusiasts may upgrade more readily. But the still-sizable contingent of people on Windows 7 is proof Microsoft simply can’t assume it’ll automatically convince everyone to upgrade — and that’s to say nothing of the millions of people still using Windows XP.

Does this mean that 8K displays are just around the corner? Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on your point of view — it doesn’t.

8K: A not-so-imminent standard

It’s easy to forget just how long it’s taken to bring 4K displays to market. The first UHD displays were built in 2003; the SMPTE released the UHD standard in 2007. With 4K displays only now starting to take significant market share across multiple display segments, the advent of 8K is going to be years away.

There’s another reason, however, for why 8K is going to be slow rolling out:

As this graph shows, the benefit of 8K displays will accrue primarily at the largest display sizes. We’ve talked about this trend in smartphones and tablets. Whether a display is “Retina”-class doesn’t just depend on your eyesight — it also varies by viewing distance. All else being equal, a larger display is harder to manufacture correctly than a smaller one, which is one reason why we saw high-resolution products roll out across smartphones years before they came to tablets or computers. If we assume that most people sit at least eight feet from the screen, that means you need a TV of at least 65 inches to be “worth” upgrading to 8K from 4K. At an eight-foot distance, a 45-inch screen is noticeably better than 720p.

Then there’s issues of content mastering and 8K transmissions — HEVC was created to deal with 4K, but we might need an H.266 standard to encode 8K effectively — and there’s a great many reasons to think that an 8K transition will still be years in the future. Content providers are clearly planning a stop at 4K, and much of the United States’ terrestrial cable is still broadcasting at 72op, to say nothing of 1080p HD. Microsoft is hedging its bets for 2D content display on small screens much more than its planning for huge panoramic desktops on 32-inch or larger monitors.

The one good thing about the 8K support being baked into Windows 10 is that we’ll hopefully see 4K treated like a primary resolution rather than an also-ran. Windows 8.1 didn’t scale particularly well at high resolution on smaller displays, and while that had a lot to do with third-party support as opposed to Microsoft, the ecosystem still clearly needed time to mature. If Microsoft mandates better support for high-resolution scaling in Windows 10, other companies should be more likely to follow suit.