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Ahhh, but the betamax comparison is apt. There are some beta tapes that I purchased that I still haven't repurchased -- most especially I remember Roger Rabbit. Then there is the original Star Wars trilogy that I had in VHS, and I haven't acquired in DVD. At least my future Bluray play will read DVD's, or will I bypass Bluray and skip direct to digital movie downloads.
The problem, of course, is that many of us have been accustomed to paper books that we can buy, put on the shelves and still read 20 years later. I don't believe that any of the formats we have today will be popular in 20 years.
Take for example the Kindle. Its pretty easy to break the DRM on Kindle books today. This does not seem to me to be reasonable over the long term. I forecast (and hope) that the long term solution will be DRM-free. However, let's assume that DRM takes hold and doesn't let go. In this case, I would expect an approach that has better DRM than the current approach. Either way, I expect changes (either DRM-free or better DRM) over the next two to three years.
With this unsettled situation, it is difficult to commit to an investment of books you won't be able to access in the future. This picture is especially ugly for the impulse buyer; ie, the buyer who buys books when they see them and builds a stockpile of unread books. This impulse buy could lose dozens of books when their reader breaks and they buy a new (new format) reader.
The bottom line is that there exists a real barrier to building a library of ebooks unless you are comfortable with DRM-removal and format shifting.
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