My hope is that they get the better quality pixels *first* and then worry about getting extra pixels ...
It's sad, but it's apparent it's not going to work that way. You can't get better pixels without getting more pixels.
Color would a nice additional improvement, since even on good quality Blu-Ray titles you can still see banding in colors.
There's color and color. Banding is a symptom of insufficient color depth, and that's connected with HDR. More dynamic range requires more levels of brightness, specifically, 10 bit color depth for current HDR. Wide color gamut lets the TV display higher saturation colors. Although HDR TVs tend to have wider color gamut, there isn't any technical connection between HDR and WCG, and WCG doesn't require a higher band width signal.
Like HDR, WCG can provide some benefit for picture quality even without HDR/UHD bluray source, if you are willing to trust the TV's upconversion algorithm to extrapolate the extra brightness highlights and extra-saturated colors, though the information is not actually there in the video signal.
