The thing people also have to remember is that people want HD. Blu Ray is and will continue to be a success because the public wants it to be--the public is ready for it. In 2005, people were saying, "well, hi-def, do we really need it? Is it really that necessary?" The consumer market wasn't ready. But today people are saying, "yes, we want it, it is necessary." And when people want to own their movies in HD, they will be buying Blu Ray--there's nothing else. Its either Blu Ray or nothing. If Blu Ray fails then it will be about four or five years before another format is developed, released and then saturated to a point comparable where Blu Ray is right now, and the world will not go the next four years with no HD format--it needs and wants one, and its Blu Ray. Its success is sealed basically just because of this.

Anything that comes out afterwards will not be able to compete or replace it for, probably, a much longer period than the reign of DVD because it would have already become the home video standard; the only reason Blu Ray can supplant DVD is because there was still another television standard not yet tapped--HD. Its extremely, extremely unlikely that, once HD television is the standard in five or six years, another standard will replace it, at least for a long, long time (because how much resolution can you get for a home television? You reach a point where you reach the resolving power of the human eye. 2K would be useful, but the amount of effort to replace HD standard with 2K is enormous compared to the really small gain you get, and 4k in the home is a long, long way off, if it ever happens at all due to resolving limits of the eye on so small a screen size). HD is here to stay for a long time and Blu Ray had the luck of getting there first and (eventually) inheriting the home video standard of DVD. It won't be brought down for a while once its in there.