I just wonder which segment is larger....the people who are willing to spend a grand on a new TV and a grand on a HD player and a grand a year for HD television and/or a grand on an HD DVR............................or the people who watch movies on their HTPC or notebook.
Well, big TV sales were booming before the PS3 was released, and I haven't seen any reports of people deciding to stop buying them.
HD cable and a HD DVR only costs about $15/month over standard cable, so it's a $180/year difference rather than a grand. Netflix (for HD disc rentals) is $250 a year.
HTPCs are a tiny market compared to HDTVs, mostly P2P-using college students, who post here about buying a big HDTV as soon as they graduate and get a job
Laptop DVD use is mostly business business travellers, some of whom will certainly get blu-ray or HD-DVD drives if their employer will pay for them, but right now that's a $2,500 laptop instead of a $1,000 one so most won't.
I know Asus is releasing HD-DVD in some of their notebooks this year. HP and Toshiba already offer it as an upgrade, but it will be much cheaper in the Asus and should herald the arrival of affordable oem drives. I doubt any manufacturer is going to want to pump up their notebook rival by offering Blue Ray, so it will probably always be a Sony only offering.
I suspect most laptop manufacturers will offer Toshiba HD-DVD drives or Sony blu-ray drives depending on what customers will buy, just like they've always used HD, CD/DVD and flash drives from Hitachi, Samsung, Pioneer, Panasonic, etc.
Of course we're all just speculating, and blu-ray's current strong lead could disappear if cheap HD-DVD drives and players do become common soon enough.