I seriously doubt those were HD-DVD people. What I do think is that they were people who are tired of the industry price gouging. It's been almost 10 months since HD-DVD died. The players can be made affordably, but the BDA clearly doesn't want them to be. Even the CEO of Sony said they wouldn't be licensing the tech to the Chinese because they didn't want cheap players flooding the market. Why not? Because that way they can gouge consumers for even more money.
Here's a listing for Iron Man on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=iron+man&x=0&y=0
Yeah, the Blu-ray version is only $5 more than the DVD. But the player would also cost you about $300. If the player were half that price, more people would be willing to upgrade.
The reason for the laserdisc comment had almost nothing to do with Blu-ray becoming a dead format. It had everything to do with the high cost of the players and it becoming a niche market. In LDs hayday, the LDs themselves weren't that expensive ($60 I think was the average price), but the players were $200-$300, and that was for a low end player. That's more than Joe Average consumer is willing to spend to watch a movie. If they really want people to adopt the format and stop buying DVDs, they need to lower the price of the players. They had no problem cutting the costs when HD-DVD was still around, but suddenly all the costs have stayed pretty static since March.
People aren't asking for things for free. They're asking for things at a reasonable price. As technology advances, things are suppose to get cheaper, right? It costs far less to produce a DVD or Blu-ray disc than it did to produce an LD. The players should also cost far less to produce, yet they're still being sold at a high markup.
I got my first DVD player for $300. A Toshiba with everything built-in (dolby decoder and all that). I got my Apex a year or two later for $150. Both of those were well after Divx folded. The Toshiba was actually top of the line when I bought it. Right now though, even low end Blu-ray players are about $300 and that's just to much.