Is it a good to run in fibre to TV locations to future proof ?

Ive done this on several installs over the years using clearline OM3 fibre cable.

But recently the cost of the cable looks prohibitive, and i wondered if this is even required, given that loss less 4k compression over cat6 is now a thing.

How much higher res / higher band width is the TV install in the future going to need ?

This is a residential install with joisted ceilings, timber partitions etc.. future proofing with conduit is not really an option.

Why waste materials when conduit can be installed?

It’s only a matter of time until we move to 8K and beyond, stressing copper’s bandwidth capacity. You’d need to trade the cost of running fiber vs running conduit. Of course conduit allows more flexibility. In the short term, before we develop reasonable cost fiber endpoints, conduit and/or CAT-6 will be the easiest to implement.

And we can debate the utility of running single or multi-fiber cable that may be dark for a while.

HDBaseT 3.0 is 18Gbps = 4K non HDR 4:4:4 60Hz _ or _ 4K HDR 4:2:0 60Hz

A 4K HDR(12bit) 4:4:4 signal can go up to 24Gbps (48Gbps@120Hz). So it "IS" compressed if you are using a high quality source.

The facts are out there...

[edit]:
Note: As of right now, the only devices that have HDMI 2.1 outputs (capable of 24Gbps or greater) are game consoles (PS5, XBOX). As usual CE source companies are lagging far behind the industry, as most TVs these days support HDMI 2.1 with several supporting the full bandwidth on there inputs.

In the next few years we will most likely see Roku, Apple, and others come out with devices offering HDMI 2.1 on the outputs. As services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney, etc. bring higher bandwidth content available. The need to finally move to Gigabit ethernet over the 100Base/T they have been using forever, will probably happen then too.
Then again, that might take another 10+ years. As long as they can milk it without upgrading - meaning their competitors don't ever make the move 1st.

the problem is that nobody flippin cares about higher res. everyone is so used to streaming at this point, the concept of a 8k high res uncompressed format is woefully unnecessary. folks think the highly compressed "4k" netflix feed is awesome and going beyond that is completely unnecessary.

And people have been saying that we should be using Cat6/7 for almost 20 years but Cat5e is still hanging in there. For a dedicated system, I would install conduit but not for whole house- however, the building obviously dictates the ease with which this can be done.

Video generally looks very good and for many, it's the size of the TV that matters, not the resolution. The good thing is that a lot of TVs can up-convert well enough to use Cat5e and not have many problems.

It’s interesting when comparing 8K with a 4K expanded color gamut. Yes, you can see more face detail in the football game crowd overviews, but there is a certain “magic” with the wider gamut, and possibly less jitters. It’s a no brainer while reading micro text in 8K, but when you ask “which picture looks ‘best’?”, it’s a harder choice.

Since the consumer devices that might do higher definition can fit nicely behind wall-mounted televisions, perhaps just running another cat6 for an audio back feed from the television would make more sense.

“ Wouldn't you perfer a nice game of chess?”

The most futureproof cabling is an empty 2" conduit.

+1000

Seem to remember "why bother, it'll all be wireless soon".

I will go with others and say conduit. None of us know what the future will hold. You can be installing something that might be obsolete by the time it is to be used, so what use will it be?

I remember (and I am sure most here) some guy that wanted to work on the perfect structured cable and how his idea was to have all homes bringing that structured cable to all locations as future proofing. None of what was included in that cable would be useful today.

Fiber is still cheaper than conduit once you have a few corners to go around and the labor gets expensive. Yes conduit is better, but when you are wiring a large house conduit is not practical. Offer the fiber premium to the homeowner, and if they shoot it down it is on them and not you.

I spoke with someone recently. He is swapping out a fiber based Crestron DM system with a new AVPro Edge system. Originally the system used a single strand of fiber. The new system will require 2. Luckily a cable with 4 was pulled.

Bringing this up to illustrate how conduit is always better than trying to guess which cable to use for future proofing.