It took over 3 years for DVD players to drop below the $100 mark, and almost 4 years for them to surpass VHS as the standard. I posted most of these details in another thread so I'll see if I can find it. But anyway, Blu Ray was released in May 2006- 5 months after HD DVD was released- and after just about 18 months you can find players for around $300 and content that costs only 40% more than SD counterparts (I used a couple of new releases to get that number). Where do you think DVDs were after 18 months against VHS? Plus, from a rental perspective things are much different than they used to be. I remember DVDs costs more to rent than VHS under the old brick and mortar Blockbuster model- now you can rent from Netflix and costs are the same.
I don't think Blu Ray, or even HD DVD for that matter, has followed a path much different than when DVD was initially released. The format battle hasn't helped, but I see the format moving out of just early adopters and starting to pander to the "wait and see" crowd- and should get a lot more sales.