I think the same things could be said about the slack Blu-Ray adoption.
A couple things that hurt bluray initially was that many Bluray's were sourced from DVD quality "masters" (Which is absolutely useless) and that bluray movies were just too expensive (imo).
Many DVDs are sourced from LaserDisc to this day, it didn't seem to hurt sales. The big problem I saw with BluRay was people could get their heads around all the tangible benefits going from VHS to DVD had:
1. No rewinding
2. Better picture / sound (debatable, better than VHS, the same or better than LD)
3. Slim cases
4. TONS of re-releases
But BluRay was only offering two things:
1. Even more better super awesome hi-def picture
2. More storage (this means squat to most middle brows, even less to those with vastly increasing disk arrays)
3. More expensive for no reason (they didn't really offer this, it was foisted upon consumers, still is from what I can tell)
I think the split between HD-DVD and BluRay standards hurt both technologies, potential early adopters didn't want to bank on the lame horse (faded remembrances of the VHS/Betamax debacle). DVD had similar difficulties to surmount back in the late 90s but DivX died off pretty fast and all the competing formats merged into one standard.
So anyway, once again we have this new technology with different emerging options, glasses, no-glasses-head-on-view-only, etc. Compound that with an underwhelming effect and I think most consumers are going "meh".
