Well, all this debate may soon be a moot point:

RED (the digital camera company responsible for the world's first 4k and, later, 6k digital camera systems) has unveiled their newest product: the RED EPIC, which, by 2010, will be capable of ... this is NOT an exaggeration or joke ... 28k digital recording. That's right - 28k. As in twenty eight thousand. 28,000 x 9,334 pixels (that's right, a native 3:1 aspect ratio - other aspect ratios, such as anamorphic 2.39:1, accomplished using non-square pixels, I believe).

This completely blows the maximum resolution of film out of the water. General consensus (and this is PUSHING it, believe me) puts 70mm and IMAX film at 10-15k maximum resolution. This is about twice that.

If this becomes cost-effective, and editing setups can online this massive resolution of footage, then I, with extreme sadness, predict the death of film by the end of the next decade (that is, 2020). It will happen the same way film editing switched to digital. Once it becomes cost-effective and the quality debate is negligible, that's the end.

http://www.red.com/epic_scarlet/

Here's a size comparison of NTSC video, 720/1080 HD, 2k, 4k, RED 2540, RED 5k, RED 6k, UHDV (which, in tests, caused motion sickness in several audience members when projected at full resolution), and RED 9k.

This new 28k system will be MORE than THREE TIMES the size of the 9k frame, which is the largest one in this picture. It is heavily debatable if 35mm film is even equivalent to 9k, much less 28k.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/UHDV2.svg

I'd hoped something like this would be years upon years away from us, but apparently, I was wrong.