Sony lost the video tape war because JVC was smart enough to license VHS to other CE manufacturers. When someone went to the store, they didn't have a choice between 3 VCR's, (1 VHS & 1 beta). They had a choice of 11 VCR's (10 VHS & 1 Beta). The second reason had to do with recording time. You could record longer with VHS than with Beta.
Beta didn't have a chance.
This is the same reason that IBM based PC's beat out Apple (although in this case, it wasn't the fact that IBM licensed the technology, they were just arrogant enough to believe that nobody would be able to reverse engineer thier BIOS (the only part of the PC that IBM built internally) and they were too cheap to pay their suppliers for exclusivity (mostly becasue fo that earlier arrogance).
All that having been said, I have no idea who will win the High Definition DVD player race/war.