Thunderbolt is different. It is basically PCI Express over MIni DisplayPort with the ability to daisy chain. You definitely are not going to see Thunderbolt on PS4. Some 4K TVs have DisplayPort input but not Thunderbolt. Overall Thunderbolt won't reach widespread adoption unless Intel open its specification up and standardize a way to allow Thunderbolt controller and dGPU interact. Even then you are only going to see it on device that needs to be connected to PC.
HDMI cable length wise it depends on the cable quality. High quality one are okay for about 100 ft before HDMI repeater is needed.
4K wise HDMI 1.4 supports 4096 x 2160 up to 30 fps. HDMI 2.0 adds more bandwidth, bumping it up to 60 fps.
yeah the daisycahin feature of thunderbolt 2 would have been good for me for the new consoles, cause my tv is wall mounted on one wall and my surround reciever and consoles and cable box are in a built in shelf in the wall on another wall,and i am OCD about hiding wires, had to snake wires up and down the walls through the attic , 25" HDMI , the kinect and sony eye need to be mounted on top or bottom of the tv , if the new consoles connected with thunderbolt people with similar setups could have just plugged the kinect or sony eye into the tv without having to run a seperate cable which probably dont even exist in the proper length ,but guess it wouldnt help me till a long time down the road as i am not planning to upgrade to UHD tv anytime soon,or even to xbone or ps4
i suppose they could have made the cameras blutooh or wifi , same problem with the wii motion bar, but at least that was just 2 infrared leds that didnt need to be connected to the console so you could use wireless battery operated motion bar