The DVD format is already outdated, with the release of the Blu-Ray disc. It has the backing of all the major parties, except Toshiba and JVC. This isn't really suprising, since Toshiba owns the majority share in the DVD format, and JVC is still desperately holding on to VHS. No format with this level of support that I can think of has ever failed to grab a majority share of the market.

Blu-Ray has some pretty nice specifications too, and they've finally gone for putting the disc inside a protective caddy (they call it a cartridge). I was amazed when they didn't do this for DVDs. The transfer rate is up to 36Mbs, which is very nice indeed, and the recordable format has already been decided, thereby avoiding the mess we have with DVD-RAM/DVD-RW/DVD+RW.

The one thing that will certainly kill the DVD is the storage space. Sure, a DVD can hold a full movie at broadcast/VHS resolution, but the Blu-Ray can hold about 27G. That's about 13 hours at broadcast resolution, and a full 2 hours of high-definition. A proposed dual-layer disc would double that. As HDTV becomes popular, people are going to want to watch their movies at the same level of quality. DVDs just aren't going to be able to keep up.

All we can hope for now, is that they'll throw away the awful concept of region-coding, or at least make it workable.