dood, you are missing the point....heh.....the bottom line is that you want 1 standard so that in x amount of years you can walk up to any dvd player and play/use it. if you have a company that makes commercial DVD's and you spend tons of money producing dvd's, you want them to work in any system. customers don't want another betamax...there are many other implications, but come on dood, you should get the point....
I'm a little confused myself? Are you saying that you predict that future DVD players will not be able to read DVD-R (or DVD+R) depending on who 'wins'? That I doubt, seing as we all have CD-ROMs that can read Kodak picture cds and who knows what else kind of format, and how many people have one of those? The situation is not entirely analogous to the VHS/Beta situation, where you obviously can't put a VHS tape into a Beta mechine. Once you write to the DVD you should be able to read it as long os the media holds up, provided you write it in a standard format. Now if you want archive your data in a non-standard (or rather non-established) format like Mt. Rainier (the Edsel of DVD formats), you can do that too, but that's rather independent of physical compatibliity.
btw, Tom's Hardware had a good article on the technical differences among the different types, but I can't seem to find the link now.