While I have noticed some issues with quality on DVDs, it's never anything worth forking out for a brand new player. Every DVD and every DVD player takes, in some shape or form, advantage of our surround sound.
From what I've gathered here, either player will require an entirely new sound system or player to take full advange of the god-knows-how-much you paid for your movie. People have just finished dealing with that changie thing, for the most part, why would that want to do it again? So soon?
Also, with these shiney new players there's gonna be this multi-platform stuff. It'll be like owning a Playstation, and not owning a Gamecube kinda thing.
You won't be able to enjoy a standardized media with a single player because two companies continue to duke it out. (Where's the appeal in buying two players? More space for them to take up, more money to spend on them, more fiddling around discs, cables such.) I can see, for example, gamers dealing with this format rivalry. But I just can't see the Nuclear Family type dealing with this. I'd half-expect them to utterly ignore Blu-Ray and HD-DVD and firmly stick to DVD.
I imagine video stores will be reluctant too. When DVD arrived for the first time, it was just a single format. Nothing too hectic to take the risk on, but now there's gonna be two platforms working with two publishers, both, pretty much, against your consumer and your average store.
I can see the hype, I can see the "15 minutes" of fame, I can see a few people adopting it.... But I just can't imagine it becoming the norm to say "Let's head down to the video shop and pick out a Blu-Ray or HD DVD"!
The point I'm bringing up here is: Will the masses even want to change? With VHS there was a reason. The format was clunky, crap quality, crap, breakable, very likely to degrade over time, crap. And did I mention that it wasn't very good? (Not that DVDs are invincible or anything) But there's no outstanding issues with DVDs... Is there?
(Though, from an information storage point of view, things are looking kinda groovy!
)And, eh, P.S.: I'm all semi-pro-change really. (More indifferent. As long as all my movies end up on one format. I don't want every company coming out with their own crappy disc thing trying to be the next bandwagon). Although, upon asking some cousins, friends and family about the topic of upgrading to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD it's really been a resounding "No".
There's my thoughts on yonder subject anyway! Hold yer buyin' horses until these things prove their worth, at least!
Otherwise, have fun flitting between two formats and choosing between which publisher-thing you like best 
