When the CD arrived in the mid-1980s, many industry voices said that the new format would be cheaper to produce than LPs and tape cassettes (and, indeed, it costs about 40 cents to make a CD, and the packaging adds 25 cents to that) and that the savings would be passed on to retailers and consumers once the new format was phased in. That, of course, never happened, and the industry had a historic windfall as fans replaced their vinyl collections.
Anyone see a comparison to the DVD/VHS continuum?