Porn industry to decide the Blu-ray/HDDVD format war?

[Neon Films]

I noticed an article on aintitcool.com with links to these reports.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/01/11/ces2007_hddvd_blu_ray/

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Sony/Digital_Playground/Adult/Disc_Announcements/1080p_Porn_Blu-ray_Says_No_Thanks/433

It states that cost is a deciding factor along with the fact that the Blu-ray companies don't want to be associated with the porn industry. The porn industry was on of the reasons VHS ended up as the preferred choice over Betamax. Could history repeat itself?

[doolahroak]

I heard this a wee while ago and it is certainly worth thinking about. The porn industry is huge, especially in the states where thousands of films are produced every year.

I think it will certainly be a contributing factor.

Sony have made a sizeable mistake with the PS3 not being as widespread as originally planned. If they had got it right there would have been millions of BR players in homes around the world which would have been a huge boost for the format. Anyway, they failed there and now the xbox 360 has got the HD-DVD player add on which will further add to Sony's woes.

A friend of mine made the point that even though the PS3 was not as widespread as hoped on release, there are still a million of them out there. In other words, a million BR players. I doubt very much the same can be said of the uptake of dedicated HD-DVD players. I may be wrong though. Eventually Sony will flood the market with the PS3, and although it carries a hefty price tag, it will sell in enormous quantities. Will enough people buy the Xbox add on is another question. I know a good few folk who have one but use it without an HD TV. If you don't have an HD TV, people may well think there is no point of buying the upgrade and not having a proper display (the same argument could be made for those that just want to play games as well though).

I still think this format war is ridiculous. Why could they not have done the same as they did with DVD. That turned out pretty well I think.

......and then of course it could all be in the hands of the porn industry.

Jon

[Rob James]

I think it is analagous to what happened with SACD/DVDA rather than Beta V VHS

Just as CD offered obvious benefits over vinyl, DVD did the same for VHS.

When it came to an improved audio format the companies could not agree on a single format but that isn't the problem. The problem, in a mass market perfectly content with MP3, is convincing the average punter. Exactly the same applies with HD DVD / BD. Just because "HD ready" flat screen sales are booming a lot of people asume this means a hunger for HD discs. I'm not convinced. The reasons the flat screens are selling is A) domestic friendliness and B) It's the latest 'keeping up with the Joneses' must have item. Given the appalling images many of these sets produce I see no evidence that the mass market is hungry for a high quality picture source. So, maybe the marketing people can convince them? We'll see. I suspect MP4 will ave a much bigger impact.

[Unicorn]

I would certainly consider buying an HDTV DVD drive for my PC... except that Microsoft won't let me play disks that I buy on my analogue monitor. Whereas if I was a pirate I could just download cracked copies and play them quite happily; I'm actively worse off if I pay for movies than if I downloaded them.

The whole HDTV DVD thing has been totally screwed up and will probably need a decade or more to overtake SD DVD as a result. The dual-format and the stupid 'copy protection' hysteria is actively discouraging early adopters of the format.

[James lundy]

I've got to laugh at this whole 'porn' industry thing, as if their customers need something like 1080p to get their jollies off! :rolleyes: What a load of sh*t! :D

[Gavin Gration]

I've got to laugh at this whole 'porn' industry thing, as if their customers need something like 1080p to get their jollies off! :rolleyes: What a load of sh*t! :D

Maybe it is, but HD porn is already available and selling.

Adult entertainment earns significant revenue for webmasters, mobile media and pay per-view providers - it's a fact. As such it shouldn't be suprising that they're at the front of the HD/BR disc queue.

The adult industry have got the production money to spend - maybe not Hollywood budgets but proper money.

Speaking of Pirates ;) http://www.piratesxxx.com/

In the words of Mr Howerd, "Titter ye not!"

[doolahroak]

I've got to laugh at this whole 'porn' industry thing, as if their customers need something like 1080p to get their jollies off! :rolleyes: What a load of sh*t! :D

Kind of agree James. The idea of high def porn could be pretty horrifying. Still can't deny that a lot these folks in the states are already producing hi def content though and if they adopt HDDVD then BR has already lost MILLIONS of customers worldwide.

Yes, HD TVs are selling well but, lets be honest, if you need a new TV set that's all there is out there really having been in a few electrical stores recently. It doesn't matter to people watching SD on a plasma/LCD is actually worse quality that their old, bulky CRT. It's just bigger......great. I still stand by my view that I have little to no interest in watching HD TV. Films, another matter. I saw HD proper for the first time in a bar in Boston watching an American Football game. My initial thought was 'oh. that's very sharp'. minutes later I was just watching and Am footy game. The wow factor probably lasted about two minutes.

If my TV set goes then it wil be a HD flat screen that replaces it but I am far more interested in replacing my projector for an HD version. If you're gonna do it properly the screen should be at least 2 metres :)

I friend of mine recently bought a new house and the owner left the HD plasma as a selling point. He was telling me about it thinking that I would be impressed. I just wasn't though. I simply don't care about the average TV programme in HD as most of them look bad enough in SD as it is.

80% of my business is wedding videography and I'm sure that HD will be the buzz word at some point. But when? I kinda view HD screens in that same way that widescreen Tvs were (and to a large extent still are). Most people never rushed out to buy them other than film fans.....and what did we get......programmes in 14:9. I would say that about 20% of friends own a widescreen TV. Hell, one of my friends who is a big film fan still watches stuff on a 4:3 TV that has wood panels for Gods sake.

Do love a good rant :)

Jon

[James lundy]

Speaking of Pirates ;) http://www.piratesxxx.com/


Now in HD, see Mel Mamms 'walk the plank!". ;)

[StevenBagley]

A few interesting points about Bluray

Sales of Bluray movies have increased 700% since the launch of the PS3 in the US and are now about 20% above HDDVD. The predictions are that Bluray will continue to outsell HDDVD at a ratio of 3.5:1.

Also, the PS3 has been a phenomenal success and Sony have sold over 1m of them in the US, in less time than they managed to shift 1m PS2s it should be noted.

See http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=117 for more details.

Steven

[PaulD]

Hi
There are a number of problems with using the VHS/Betamax paradigm at present:
In the early 1980s the porn business was magazine of 8mm film based.
Therefore the move to videocassette unleashed massive new marketing opportunities.
VHS won, because Sony refused to licence the bulk production of blank Betamax cassettes to third party manufacturers, and the rental industry needed huge numbers to grow - beyond Sony's supply capabilities.

However the situation today is that no movie distribution needs HD to grow their market significantly. In fact the major Californian porn distributors have gone on record as predicting that interactive internet porn-on-demand will provide the bulk of their revenue within five years....