Never too early to make predicitive assessments. Business does it regularly to make revenue and market forcasts mid and long term. If there are enough facts, trends and valid assumptions, one can make sound predictions or forcasts. Ofcourse, such predictions can always be upset by unforseen conditions. Like when they predicted that BD will win LONG BEFORE either formats were launched.
Seems to me that whenever there are fearless forcasts saying that BD will lose, there are always BD defenders who will say it's too early to say - a common observation across the avforums I've visited. I am sure if the opposite were hapenning, there'd be HD DVD defenders who'd retort likewise.
Let me just echo here a sentiment of one early High Def adopter in another forum that I agree with. BD has always aimed to be the ONE and ONLY ONE format for the next gen video format. That has been made clear in their press releases since last year. (And I don't recall Toshiba doing the same, but they may have too. ) The BD camp never envisioned to have any stiff competition from anyone. They have the studio and manufacturing muscle to kill the competiion. That is why they never seriously accommodated Toshiba's overtures to merge technologies for a single format. That is why they never licensed dual format players that Samsung was quite enthusiastic about early this year. And that is why they thought all along that MPEG2 would be sufficient for the job at this time, reserving AVC or VC1 for latter reincarnations of their titles to further milk the market with title reissues.
Their overconfidence has caused them so much. They launched late and when they finally launched every indication points to half-baked products. Their launch products just weren't at par with the competition in terms of value. Now what is happening is that, at best, BD is catching up but will have to live with a not-so-strange bed fellow for the rest of its natural life. And what is ironic, by all indications, BD might just now be running for dear life.
Is it too early to tell? Maybe. But IF the trend continues, the safest predition will be that both formats will coexist. There is now no way that Toshiba and Microsoft won't or can't do to match whatever Sony et al might have up their sleeve. The die is cast, so to speak, for HDDVD to achieve critical mass ahead of BD. Their Xbox360 add-on answers the PS3. They have licensed HD DVD technology to the the world's biggest DVD makers in CHINA, which the BD camp adamantly refuses to do. It is plain as day that BD has failed to neutralize HD DVD - a monumental failure of their goal to become the sole next gen video format meant to supplant DVD. It was never their goal to coexist with any other format, but to be the one and only one.