However, the actually transition to DVD was not so convenient. One of the advantages of Blu-Ray, and the reason why I believe that it has been and will continue to overtake DVD faster than DVD overtook VHS, is backwards compatibility. When buying a DVD player in 1998, consumers had to decide whether to keep a VHS player lying around, or get rid of their VHS collection. With Blu-Ray, they don't need to make this decision, as the players still play DVDs, and they make them look better as well.  Because of this, the upgrade to a new format isn't as much of a hassle.

If CEs start phasing out DVD players as the manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray players drop, then eventually everyone will have Blu-Ray. Once Blu-Ray takes 80+% marketshare, studios will stop producing DVDs, much like they stopped producing VHS.

To my knowledge, or at least what I came to understand from this thread at HighDefDigest.com, Sonic Solutions is the primary, if not the only, provider of professional authoring tools for the HD DVD format. If they stop providing these tools, aside from supporting those who have already purchased them, that means that it will be impossible for any new studio to begin producing on HD DVD, unless they get a larger studio to author their films for them, and it is also impossible for studios currently supporting HD DVD to buy more software and expand their suppot for the format.

The fact that "Sonic will offer its Scenarist HD DVD customers a special promotion to exchange their authoring system(s) for a Scenarist BD system" only hurts HD DVD even more.

As this HD DVD supporter said, "Exactly, that's why this news hits me in the HD DVD gut harder than the Warner move. The Warner move was a surface move. This is an undercurrent event. Not sure how to best describe that... I guess if I'd describe Warner's move as a public knife gutting, the Sonic news is akin to getting diagnosed with cancer."

I would definitely say that this is as big, if not bigger, than the Warner move.

Well why didn't you post those first? Those do say more than some press release.

As for what this means, you seem to think that leaving means they can't use the software. That isn't true unless the partnership specificaly forbids use of already made tools.

If they are forbidden, then the HDF needs to scramble for a new software partner. If they are allowed to use what is already there, then they can use that until they find a new software partner. 

1. Do you mean first as in before the PS2 was even announced as a player? When the PS2 came out, it made it obvious that DVD was basically movies on a CD. We knew the convenience of CDs, so the thought of the same convenience, as well as the cool extra features, made DVD very appealing. 

2. Why do you think that's the only major ad the HDF will buy? Of course they will buy more ads worldwide. The BDA can do the same, but at least it would show they are reaching for more than the A/V crowd. 

Sonic Solutions will continue to support those who have already purchased software from them. However, if Universal or whoever wishes to expand their operations, it would be necessary to buy more software, which they would be unable to do.

That is, of course, assuming that their current software is in use roughly 100% of the time.

Did I tell you guys the future is Blu?

Oh, and another Blu update:
The week ending January 27th showed that Blu-ray accounted for 82% of high-def disc sales, and again, all top 10 high-def sellers were Blu-ray titles.

So this isn't as bad as it seems. They don't lose what they already had. They just need to find a new partner for furture applications. 

Well, I finally jumped in and made my first BluRay purchases: Blade Runner Ultimate and Lost S3 (on sale at Amazon).

Now all I need is a player...

And an HDTV, but assuming you have one, the PS3 is a pretty good player. 

I noticed Amazon have some HD-DVD on special (clearance sale ?) but in spite of the sale prices it's not doing very well. Blu-ray which is not on sale is holding a comfortable lead in every domain. ! ;
When Blu-ray was on sale a few weeks back it totall flew it actually came to the level of the old DVD format on amazon 4 of top 5 disk'swere blu-ray!. Blu-ray sales were matching(or possibly exceeding) DVD sales when they had a discount on amazon !.
HD-DVD is so far far down the rank perhaps the only way to revive it would be for toshiba to give away millions of free players and disks to attempt to resucitate it.

Blu-ray has the edge in capacity and streaming data rate AND QUALITY
HD-DVD maxes out it's peak data rate I checked with planet earth the peaks are clipping the data and compromise the image quality even with the best codecs ! VC-1 needs blu-ray's higher data rate to avoid image distortion ! (both HD-DVD and blu-ray use VC-1 on planet earth). In a 5.1 or 7.1 channel sourround sound movie the peak action sequences will easily exceed the 36Mbps streaming rate of HD-DVD so every action sequence on HD-DVD effectively has compromised image quality!.
VC-1 is good but it's needs a higher data rate than HD-DVD specification provides !. While both formats use VC-1 Blu-ray 's 48mbps provides superior image quality when those high action -detail sequences occur.
To fit 7.1 channel sound HD-DVD has a peak image data rate of only 28Mbps compared to the 40Mbps of blu-ray !. BLU-ray has superior image quality to HD-DVD (assuming both formats are fully optimised as one should expect).