CD's were NOT given a "Death sentence" from DVD's or HD-DVDs.
They are STILL a standard that is implemented by thousands of devices, from CD-players to stereo's to any number of other electronics.
The only devices that can be called "dead" are things like Jaz Drives, Zip Drives, and SuperDisk Drives, and even then they still have a (perhaps foolishly) loyal following. The only reason they died out was not because of technical inferiority at the time but in some cases simply that they had terrible marketing departments.
Now, the media itself, on the other hand, has a reduced archival rate... this is easily solved via regular duplication (if you can't set aside a few minutes every 5 or 10 years to make a duplicate it really can't be that important, can it?).
Additionally, CD-ROM drives were introduced over 10 years ago- it took that long for floppy drives to become "optional" components, even though they stored over 700 times as much as a floppy.
