Remember Advanced Photo System (APS)? Not many people do. It was introduced in 1996 by Kodak, Fujifilm, Minolta, Nikon, Canon and others.
I think of it as an attempt to squeeze in one more generation of analog photography products (cameras and film) before digital took over. The attempt was made about a dozen years ago by an impressive roster of photo industry players, including Kodak, Fuji, Nikon, and Canon. It hardly took off, then it crashed when digital arrived.
Blu-Ray seems similar: it’s an attempt to squeeze in one more generation of disk-based video products before downloading and streaming take over. But downloading and streaming are already here.
I think that the victory of Blu-Ray over HD DVD will be more expensive than significant. I’m far from alone in this, although a search yields only one other person using the APS analogy.