Yeah, I think it's happening as we speak with DVD as well. I can buy a DVD player here for about $70 - it'll play DVDs, VCDs, and CDs. (Atomic, I think those expensive players you mentioned must be DVD burners.) The bitch of it's the cost of hardware and software for producing DVDs - still too rich for my pocket.
With people playing all sorts of media on the same player, presumably we'll start to hear the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit stuff as well. Taste tells.