You're right. Sony did have a vested interest in this technology. Didn't see that one. They dug themselves a hole by limiting their options though. More people buy DVDs than you think, although the number has decreased sharply. However, you need to understand that all those people that have stopped purchasing DVDs aren't neccesarily purchasing Blu rays. Some think HDDVDs and blu rays are one in the same. Most people that aren't buying blurays however, are buying digital content instead. Digital distribution is the true future. Now Sony will have to wait until next generation to join the movement. They can do it now, but doing so would hurt their standing in wall street in a big way. How bad would it look if they suddenly stopped supporting the technology they were the forefront supporters for?

Really bad.

It was very stupid for Sony (in terms of games division) to put the BD to PS3. Kaz of course is doing PR work and trying to make some sense for the public for the decision.

@Joeorc: I think you lost me too. The filmmakers already have a platform to film on atleast for the next two decades; the 35mm film.

That's why you see the HD releases of decades old films, since it's easy to scan the films to lower resolutions, such as 1080.

I am sorry if i am not being clear enough, the bit rate is one of the big problems with DVD vs Blu-Ray and HD DVD both HD DVD and Blu-Ray could support the higher Bit Rate that DVD could not.

AS for Digital Downloads being the future over Optical Medium's in a short time from now. That is a MYTH and Digital Downloads is great for Music and almost anyform of Data , but on the same token the advancement of fast digital download speed's are not going happen or to be as fast as some of you might think for one right now for the most part the network capacity broadband cap. more and more ISP companies are already putting a CAP on how much people will be able to download in any month, that will prob. be more and more of a problem as we move forward because the growth will far outstrip the stability of the SERVER's traffic stability and its capability to handle the traffic. there will be just like there is now area's that do not even have access to broadband you have to use diaup, or satalite or 3G  just to have internet . that's going to Take soem time. The Digital Download will be the future yes but no where near as fast as some may think ESP. in the UNITED STATES one of the slowest to advance in the network infrastructure needed for such to be a full replacement for Optical Medium . Which most likely never happen anyway DUE to the fact that as long as DVD's stay popular with the majority of consumer's the more likely the consumer's will stick with DVD which also will include Blu-Ray because ALL Blu-Ray player's ALSO PLAY STANDARD DVD's.

the NEXT optical format would Be HOLOGRAPHIC which Blu-Ray already is. despite the many ANTI-Blu-Ray pundant's Blu-Ray is The Standard that the largest Optical drive companies have decided to support Blu-Ray and the Price of Blu-Ray has dropped to the point Now it's getting near mass market price point. by 2013 it will be at DVD price point. and for those that think Digital Download's will outstrip physical media by that point will be Quite mistaken Digital Downloads Market share will not outstrip physical medium "when it come's to movies" because of the simple fact STANDARD DVD will still have the largest market for movies market share even over Blu-Ray, and Digital Downloads will not have greater market share than Blu-Ray because the infrastructure for NETWORK's will still not be robust enough even by 2013 its just not going to happen, Physical media for the near future is still going to be the main distribution method for Movies over DIGITAL DOWNLOADS, Blu-Ray still Play's STANDARD DVD's and will keep doing so. So unless vast majority of people stop buying DVD's Digital Downloads will be the Niche not Physical Medium's.

this apply's mainly to MOVIES and Games Music is a whole story in of itself.

AS for Blu-Ray being the main cost increase of the PS3...no its not not even close, the big cost was mainly due to the Cell  an the cost of  GPU never mind the cost increase of the heatsink and Fan ..that was a big cost in of itself. yes the Blu-Ray drive was a cost increase but not as much as many people think . the main cost increas is because of the overall cost of the component's in the PS3, If any thing Blu-Ray's cost is not that much of an added cost even if sony did not use Blu-Ray the cost of the PS3 would have still been high over $400.00  anyway.

And the Best part is Blurays play DVD too.

@Joeorc: Well, that wasn't the issue that i was wondering about what you said earlier.

I don't think ISP:s are putting caps on their networks. They likely are just getting rid of them as their infrastructure gets better and capasity increases. Then again, the ISP:s may also want to move the internet to 3G (and 4G and so on in the future), because mobile networks are cheaper to maintain, update and build than copper wire networks.

I don't see the problem of 3G networks in downloads. The current 3G networks aren't suitable (as far as i know) for low latency requirements, but since you can currently have a 7Mbps connection, the bandwidth shouldn't be a big problem.
I have 512Mbps connection myself and my mobile operator offers connection up to 3,6Mbps.

Physical media still is the biggest distribution method and will be for awhile. Just like DVD will be.
The problem with BD adoption is, that it is expensive, people want the content instead of tech, BD doesn't offer the same benefits over DVD that DVD did over VHS, and as the players and TV:s upscalers gets cheaper and better in quality, the quality gap between HD source and SD source only narrows, giving people less incentive to upgrade.

@bdbdbd

I think you underestimate digital distribution. Five years from now it will be the main medium of distribution. Music has already adopted it as the main form of distribution. If only slightly. DVRs, Tivos and services like netflix are becoming common place in households. The Iphone and upcoming pspgo have adopted downloadable ownership as their only form of distribution. The upcoming ZuneHD is gonna be able to play any media on any external HD platform like an HDTV. If the zuneHDs' memory drive is large enough people will carry mini HD movie libraries in their pockets.

All these things have happened or will happen as soon as this year. Digital distribution will become the main form of distribution around 2012 but it won't establish itself until 2014. Bluray will peak around 2011.

@ dclKeeL,

Where are you getting these estimates from for digital distribution market share?

I disagree with Joeorce on quite a bit, but he's absolutely 100% dead-on for digital download adoption rate. It's going to be VERY slow, and probably won't compete with physical media for movies for another decade. Keep in mind that to truly enjoy the benefits of digital distribution you would want ALL of your movies/games on a single device or service. Correct? For a long while, people will resist moving to totally digital due to the cost involved. For instance, I have upwards of 500 DVD movies, not counting 100+ TV seasons, so for me to get a digital copy of those on a HDD (legally) is entirely cost prohibitive. At $5-7 per disk (which is cheaper than I'm sure they'll charge), I'm looking at an investment of $5,000 easy. Also, keep in mind how long it would take to download an entire catalog of movies. Let's say you want a 1080p movie that takes up 20gigs. Let's assume your bandwidth is like mine, at 10Mbps (yeah, I hate that they quote bits instead of bytes too). That's equivalent to about 1 megabyte per second at optimum real-world conditions. So 20,000,000,000 divided by 1,000,000 is about 20,000 seconds, or 333 minutes, or 5.6 hours. So, in a 24 hour day, you could theoretically download about 4 movies if you kept up nonstop. So for my collection of about 900 discs (500 movies plus 100 TV seasons with about 4 discs avg per season), it would take me 225 days of nonstop downloading and $5K. Please note, that a lot of people don't have a 10Mbps connection, and that you often get a lot less than advertised, and that you're basically preventing yourself from doing much of anything on the internet during those days in which you download movies. Do you still think it's practical?

For small games, sure, I love it. I download PC and WiiWare games all the time. For movies and large 'core' games, it doesn't make sense. Also note that I was assuming only 20 gigs for a movie. BR movies can hit 50 gigs... so I'm assuming that some of the larger digital downloads will be that large, which brings your total to only 2 movies per day.