From a manufactorer's and retailer's standpoint that just ain't happening. There is actually one more studio making titles in Blu-Ray than in HD-DVD. Right now Toshiba is selling all their players at a huge loss to get market share. They can't keep it up. THe cost of Blu-Ray will come down and universal players (think SACD &DVD-A) will be out in a while. If you could have the same title play in either machine, given the truths about the formats, what would you choose?
If I were going to pick right now, I'd go HD-DVD - partly because I plan on buying a 360 and I can get the player for $200. If I were going to wait for a universal player, I'd still buy the HD-DVD disc because I despise Sony and all their propriety junk.
Personally, the only way I see either format surviving is if a universal player comes out that plays both. If you ask me, both formats aren't going to go very far. They're like the sacd/dvda of the video world. Yes, its a step forward, but not a big enough one to draw in the consumer. Especially with
1TB dvd's on the way and Chinese manufacturers making
EVD's that offer 1080p on standard dvd's and players costing less than $100.
At the moment, the biggest appeal for the HD discs are from diehard av-ers or from video game enthusiasts that own either a 360 or a ps3. I don't know of that many other people all that interested in either format, at least not yet. I guess I see it from a consumer point of view. And right now thats, I can buy a 360 and have a great gaming platform, and pay $200 more dollars and get HD-DVD....or I could wait another year and get a ps3 when those finally are common on store shelves. At the moment I find it completely ludacris to buy a BD or HD-DVD standalone unit at their current prices.
However, right now the PS3 is floundering in every way possible. People are losing interest by the lack of them on the market and all the problems that have came up in the couple of weeks since their release. Looking at sales alone shows that 360 is outselling the ps3 hands down. Normal consumers are buying the 360, normal consumers can't buy the ps3, so I'm guessing that normal consumers will go with HD-DVD addons for their 360 rather than buy a $1000 BD player, or wait for a ps3.
The only other advantage I know of that BD has over HD-DVD is the extra 25gb's of storage space per disc. However, I could have sworn I read that the Telledega Nights BD only took up 7gb's of space and the same goes for many other titles taking up similar sizes. If everything won't fit on one disc, put it on two - the same thing that manufacturers do today. And who really cares about the bonus features anyway.