Well, from the sounds of things the competition in the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war is killing the competition. Oh, was that vague? I meant they're killing each other. Neither of them is seeing the kind of sales numbers that they were expecting. Like that should come as a surprise...
Format wars are always bloody and leave battered carcasses littered everywhere. Some examples include the word processing document format. Do you really use anything other than *.doc files? Spreadsheets - *.xls. Music - *.mp3. Video - *.avi. etc. etc. etc.
While some may bicker about my examples, never-the-less, they are still the most popular in their category and will be for some time. It doesn't matter if there are better formats than MP3. People like their substandard audio quality MP3s because they're easy, common, and portable.
And that's what has been forgotten so often and why the high definition DVD format war is hemorraging on both sides. As consumers, we want things to be easy, simple, and ubiquitous. We're not interested in having 50 trillion different things to do what should be a relatively simple task. "Let me watch my movies now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday would be good though. And don't make it tough. Don't make me think. I'm looking to be entertained, not educated..."
How many FTP protocols are there? How many email protocols? How many definitions are there for HTTP? (Versions are not new definitions.)
These things work, well, except for email because spammers have turned it in to complete garbage. But they all have different purposes and serve different spaces. They all also have only 1 definition. They are SIMPLE!
DVD? Oh mother of mercy! Compatibility is crumbling under complexity. I should just be able to go into a store, buy a DVD, then go home and play it. Will that happen? Nope. Doesn't look like it.
Open standards like FTP and email are a far superior way to go about things than having multiple proprietary standards that only serve to create a bloodbath amongst the vendors and customers.
If you remember sending documents years ago, how often did you have to find out what other people could open? All the time. Far too often. “Oh, I can't open that format. Can you send me a *.blahblahblah file?” It's bad for companies. Bad for consumers. And just bad all the way around.
But none of this is going to get solved anytime soon. We've still got the upcoming DRM wars to deal with, and that's going to be even bloodier.
Cheers,
Ryan