HD v BluRay DVD = Betamax/VHS redux

In which fodder will be made that corporate moneyed interests cannot be counted on to serve the best interests of the consumer.

And that is true on its face, at least in the short term. Without going into the technologies involved, someone is going to be left holding an obsolete system in just a few years.
But a number of commenters will choose to ignore that sometimes the best CURRENT technology should not be adopted. Or that it's not really such a big deal if it isnt.

Betamax / VHS is used as the model for how marketing trumps technology by most, yet the same pundits might ignore 8MM against competitive mini-cassettes... for the very reason that they know NOW that these were simply transitional.

The reason for the bickering STARTS in the labs of various corporations which work to develop a technology that will be forward-thinking. It's not enough to come out with a platform that supports current needs, it has to be viable for new requirements down the road.

What we call "High Definition" now, might not seem so in 10 years. In fact this concept is what chiefly made the delay in the definition of the HD broadcast standard.

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But, in the end, it will all play out and be resolved in the marketplace. Those who still choose to lament the defeat of Beta will not do so for the audio 8 track v Philips Cassette. The best tech won! And they ignore that they would likely have had to buy new equipment in approximately the same timeframes if Beta had been adapted.

But, THIS TIME, the net effect on the consumer is likely to be just a few pennies per product.
The argument isnt so much over playback format... it's about anti-copy/security technology and the costs of building production machinery.

Meantime it is not for certain that a mechanism cant be developed that will play both media. The electronics are not a problem... it's the physical mechanism that has potential limitations...and didnt we find, in retrospect, that DVD v CD wasn't "all that much a hassle"? You can bet that redundant decoding electronics needed to play both will be cheap.

What's really involved will be the need for the producer to pay royaties to both patent holders.

And it's time time we reminded ourselves to look at the "Big Picture", anyway; this whole thing started back in the sixties when Ampex sold its patent rights to NEC because it saw no real future in, or need for, a consumer video tape product.