Although it would be a little more expensive to release movies authored and inventoried in two different formats, it’s something the studios have done before with Betamax and VHS and laserdisc and 8mm, in some cases.
How about Fullscreen and Widescreen? That’s another case of two separate copies of the same movie being stocked, and it happens all the time even now. Both HDDVD and Bluray probably have the ability to put both full screen and wide screen on the same disc, so it’ll essentially be the same as we have now. Bluray and HDDVD also both have the ability to put a DVD on the same disc. I suspect the industry will be just fine with both formats.
At least, as long as all the movie companies support both. Otherwise the main burden will be the morons who only support one format forcing the consumer to get multiple players.
Which is really nice for us future PS3 owners, but the point I wanted to make was at the end of the article…