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I have a feeling that in ten years time, we will be having this same discussion as to why HD-DVD or BluRay DVDs failed to replace the regular DVD.


You're probably right. To most consumers, DVD is to VHS what CDs were to casette tape. It's not that it's higher quality, but that it's got bonus features, it doesn't wear out, etc. I imagine that in ten years the amount of bandwidth into many homes will be high enough that video downloads start becoming entirely feasible, and some video analogy of MP3 files will gain prominence, with all the attendant legal wrangling and whatnot. Already, it's standard procedure for students here to share ripped DVDs on the dorm network. That's clearly the direction people want to go.

On the flip side, HDTV is real and lots of people really do watch it and appreciate it. Given how amazingly cheap DVD players are getting, and how fast they're adopting features to compete with one another (see, for example, the rapid adoption of progressive-scan output), it's entirely possible that HD-DVD players will just be the default for people, long before any content is available in the same way that many of us had "HD-ready" sets years before we used them to watch any HD content.