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Porn Industry Mulls Next Generation-DVD
MBCook writes "ZDNet has an interesting article about how the porn industry might end up deciding the outcome of the HD-DVD/Blu-ray debate. One side likes the higher capacity of Blu-ray, while others like the lower costs of producing HD-DVDs. Manufacturing 11,000 titles a year, the industry would have a sizeable say in the debate."
Blew Ray?
The bigger the better!
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
I just thought it was all in the internet?
I would rather be ashes than dust!
In the end, porn really is what drives technology forward. You can believe that when we have fully tactile 3d VR, we'll have it because the porn industry invented it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
11000 porn titles a year? Goodness, who's actually watching all that? I rented a few porn movies myself when I was young(er), but to be frank, I never was impressed with any of them, and I returned most (if not all) of them without even finishing watching them.
Did I just watch the wrong ones and miss those that are actually entertaining (in whatever way)?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Why did VHS win and Betamax fail? Some people (including me) argue that the biggest reason is that all th eporn was available on VHS. Wasn't there a statement against porn from the betamax people?
Which industry was the only industry for a long time acually delivering profits selling stuff on the web during a time when all other industries promised a lot but only delivered losses?
And remember the multiple-angle button on the DVD players? Who really thinks that this button was designed for the sports industry?
I think the article hits the nail right on the head. The porn industry will decide which format will be used.
"10-foot pole" in a discussion on porn isn't a term I'm going to touch with a...
One thing I wouldn't want to watch in HD pron though... those rear end going on stuff might show more detail (and colors) than I could stomach :)
One only has to look to the Betamax to find a superior home entertainment technology that lost partially because the porn industry embraced the competitor. (actually, IIRC, Sony refused to license the beta to porn).
They have been heavily involved in the development and early adopters of: online credit card transactions, streaming video/webcams, VHS, multi-angle DVDs, pop-up ads, affiliate programs, pay-per-view, 900 #s, geo-targetting... the list goes on.
SSL Certificate
"We're kind of riding it out a little further to see where the trend goes," said Jackie Ramos, an executive in the DVD division at leading porn producer Wicked Pictures. that's a classic if i've ever seen one
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
<ObSimpsons>
Marge: "Fox turned into a hard-core porn network so gradually, I didn't even notice!"
</ObSimpsons>
The reason DVD is so popular isn't so much cost or quality, even though it helps. It was because it was the ONLY format. Most people that have a DVD player now can't even tell the difference between VHS and DVD (sad, I know) and only got one because they can borrow movies from their friends and because they are cheap. This whole thing is going to blow up in their faces because Joe Average isn't going to know which one to get and they sure aren't going to buy 2 players.
At that rate, even if there are all in one players they are never going to hit the hillbilly Wal-Mart sub $50 price point (or $100 at that rate) having to have 3 lasers (Blu-ray, HDDVD, DVD/CD).
This porn thing is going to be a mess too. Porn is a HUGE industry. If there is going to be a format war internally there, you can expect nothing but a mess.
This is going to be a colossal freaking debacle.
First, if the industry puts more and more porn onto one disc they'll risk losing sales if they charge more for that one disc. If someone is ordering porn on sees a $50 disc and a $25 dollar disc, I'm guessing they'll go with the $25 disc, regardless of how much porn is on the former.
Second, the vast majority of porn actresses are NOT that good looking. Sure they look somewhat OK on DVD, but once you put them on HD you'll start noticing the grotesque flaws, e.g., surgical scares.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Oh so you like German porn?
Open Source Java DAO Generator
From what I've heard, Betamax lost to VHS because at first they were both proprietary formats. Betamax held less tape BUT had a higher quality. Sony made Betamax but at first would not let the porn industry use the format since they felt it was immoral and unethical. I know that Japan has had some very serious anti-porn laws in place in the past. This also could have been an issue. Anyhow, I think it was JVC that came up with VHS and were more than eager to cash in on the porn goldmine. These two new formats (also proprietary) are both welcoming the porn industry as the lesson has been learned...never underestimate the financial power of porn! Has anyone heard of China's EVD? I believe it was the first to use blue ray technology but it's patent is open. That means that anyone can use it without royalties. I believe this is why it has not been used in America, it welcomes bootleggers. And that's probably why it's so popular in China :)
It's not the porn indistry per se that is driving this technology, it's capitalism. The article makes it seem as though the porn industry is lined with visionaries that sit around all day and come up with ways to better society. They're not driving anything. They're reactionaries. While it's true that the porn industry has fuled the emergence of many technologies, they are doing so mostly by accident. They are only in the business of making money. Take DVD's for instance. They are much cheaper to produce, they are more durable, lighter (cheaper distribution) and they don't melt when you leave them paused on one scene for a long period of time. This is clearly a natural fit for the porn industry, so they started producing DVD's. Same goes with the porn explosion in the early days of the Internet. Inexpensive distribution, and people clearly had poor judgement when they were wanking off. (Why do you think they can offer subscriptions for $29.95 a month.)
I know this post comes off as porn bashing, but let's not give those guys (and girls) too much credit. They saw an opportunity and seized it. Same with mass spammers. They aren't trying to ruin the Internet, but where there's a buck to be made...
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Too true. A game released as adult-only: Tons of gore, rivers of blood, some glimpses of naked tits. Same game released as PG-13: Tons of gore, rivers of blood, pixelated tits.
...and now we have Mafia bosses deciding what standard we will use.
But it's not only production...
Remember "Morrowind?" There was a character named Crassius Curio, a lord with taste for earthly deligts. He wasn't a very demanding master. His tasks were quite simple. "Take off all your clothes and show yourself to uncle Crassius." Menawhile other "lords" demanded assassination of competitors, mugging people, blackmail, requested bribes, wanted betrayal and all kind of such filth. Now visit Morrowind forums and look up for threads "most hated NPC". Of course harmless Crassius is far in front of the list and many people boast how they sneakily murdered him or what tortures would they want to apply to him.
It's scary how activity of destroying life is more accepted that creating it, and how strong hipocrisy makes otherwise harmless (unless of course taken over by the crime organizations, i.e. because of the reputation) porn industry "the devil".
Probably if it wasn't treated as such "sneaky back door" stuff, all the wrongs (rape, slavery, violence) could be fought better too.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Recommended reading: Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age. This book maps out how pornography has propelled technology forward through the ages, from the printing press to the Internet. Amazon even lets you read the first few pages.
It's interesting to see the HDDVD/BluRay discussion in some longer-range historical light.
-Mark
...the one that is most resistant to sticky fingers marks.
Paul Leader
If you check one of the links in the Betamax Wikipedia article you linked to, you'd notice this article debunking the Betamax player superiority as a myth.
The article has several good points, although it's sometimes hard to tell what can be attributed to hindsight and what can't. Anyhow I think it's safe to say that "Betamax > VHS" is a huge oversimplification.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Don't forget GPS, electric typewriters, electric toothbrushes, space-age polymers, bicycle protective gear, the camera-stylo, the "you must be at least this tall" sign at amusement parks, flexicuffs, any number of gadgets and machines the proper use of which I cannot even imagine, and reality tv.
I'm looking forward to multiple commentary tracks, from the producer/director and the actors.
"This montage here is homage to Eisenstein's battle on the frozen lake in Alexander Nevsky, and the backdoor finale evokes the Teutonic Knights' flight from camp"; "That one line, 'any of you girls order a pizza?' took me fifteen takes, and it just didn't seem right. Then Bob took me aside and said to just give it my all, and *wham* I nailed it".
It accounts for about $30 million dollars in tax revenue for the San Fernando Valley.
Oh baby, yes,..make more movies! Yes, yes, oh yes!!!!!....<CIGARETTE>puff</CIGARETTE>
I may be misinformed, but EVERY time I see a prototype of a Blu-Ray unit, it says Blu-Ray Recorder. This should be a significant advantage for ANYONE who's owned HDTV for more than a day or two. Eventually, you want to record these beautiful concert performances in 5.1 and time-shift the Sopranos. So far as I've read, HD DVD is a playback only device, just like DVDs today. If Blu-Ray can RECORD HD and playback when it launches, it MUST win over the other format. Early HDTV adopters need to make sure of it, despite what the porn industry decides and what joe six pack can find at WalMart.
-nfo
Broadcasting LIVE from a Bonus Room Over the Gara
"Adult film producers want the higher quality picture as well as extra space for creative expression--like giving viewers choice of camera angles."
Seeing as how I used to sell this stuff in mass quantities to some of the lowliest scum on the face of the planet, all I can say is this...
There is no reason for them embrace this new technology until it becomes mainstream and cheap. So few movies make use of the multiple camera angles , and those that do cost $59.99 (retail mind you.) They're the Jenna Jameson or (insert some triple implanted face lifted ugly skank here) movie where she's not even doing another guy, it's all solo vibrator stuff.
If they need to put more content on there, they just put it on another DVD fairly cheaply, then hike the price up a lot. The Fashionistas was some glamourous production, coming on 4 discs. Yes, 4 discs. Just like LotR, 2 discs were movie, 1 was extra crap you'd never watch, and 1 was more extra crap you'd never watch. $79.99 retail. It's about the only movie I've seen use multiple disks for actual content that wasn't just cuts of other movies.
Most movies that are over 60-90 minutes are just a bunch of cuts from other movies, some huge 8 hour montage.
Not to mention bondage, those movies are a total of 30 minutes. That's it.
$29.99 - $39.99 is the selling point price it seems for most profit. Hell, we'd sell movies we bought for $1.50 for $39.99 and people would buy them. Want to make some money? Open an adult bookstore. They raked in about $20K net profit... net... per month.
I highly doubt they'll use the extra capacity to make a longer movie, or even put in extra angles, or much of anything else. They will move to the next gen format only when other people are using it enough to make profitable to them.
Why?
They are already making a lot of money without using next gen discs, without putting in extra content, and without putting in extra angles. All this is fluff that people do not care about, they just want to buy some movie that has a picture of a goat on the front.
Yes, true story... some man wanted to rent a movie that said "Explicit material" on the front and had a picture of a goat. He asked me at least 10 times if they had sex with the goat in it, and each time I assured him it was illegal and there would be no animal sex of any kind in it. After all this, he rents it anyways just to make sure.
f-ing sick. I'll spare you some of the more graphic stories, but let me tell you... nothing makes you more apathetic for humanity that working in a pr0n store for almost three years.
All kidding aside, that is a LOT of product. I wonder how much they actually make off these movies. Cant imagine they cost much to produce.
I notice they are not too concerned about so-called piracy, and are still profitable. Or at least if they are annoyed, they havent gone public like the other members of the entertainment industry.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What a clever way to fill up that extra space.
AGGGH. STRUGGLING...
Must not... take... bait...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I think the porn industry will have little or no influence on this fight. Unlike with Betamax/VHS, the porn producers already have a cheap, ubiquitous format, and there's no way that porn is stretching the limits of DVD.
I think computer users will influence the decision. Given a penny or two's difference in medium cost, a computer user will most likely opt for the bigger storage medium. I doubt many will have any qualms about a $50 difference between a Blu-Ray-ROM and a HD/DVD-ROM, considering the huge size difference. A number of game companies are already endorsing Blu-Ray, because they have no problem packing in extra content (the game itself and associated media, possibly in many resolutions, artwork, story boards, sound files, desktop themes etc. etc.).
The entertainment industry is leaning towards HD/DVD for the moment, but I think that the sheer volume of Blu-Ray discs that computer users would consume (movie consumers don't buy stacks of 100 discs at a time) would force the price down to compete or beat HD/DVD. The entertainment insudtry would probably have to follow the crowd, assuming they don't jump on the bandwagon early. The porn industry would probably follow later.
Many people are aware that the porn industry has been a major driving force in the adoption of new entertainment technologies. However, the next-gen DVD isn't exactly a new technology per se, it's just an upgrade to an existing technology. It offers pretty much nothing new to porn producers except more space, which they don't need. DVD's already have scene-selection, menus, multiple angles, soundtracks, etc. What really does the next-gen format have to offer?
It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys.
yeah, I know we all want to watch our movies at a billion lines of resolution but the only reason I see Hollywood being so gung-ho about getting a new standard out is because DVDs are now easy to copy or you can download a DVD rip off the net. Downloading 2GB used to be a feat but in day of increasing bandwidth it's no longer unreasonable. HD-DVD or Blu-Ray would require new burners, media and a rip would be 5-7x larger.
I concur.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
From what I understood, Blu-Ray continues to use MPEG-2 while HD-DVD uses MPEG-4, so HD-DVD didn't need as much space as Blu-Ray does. But looking at specs online, I see that MPEG-4 is listed as one of many codecs supported for both. It's confusing following the process of both formats.
So am I right in saying the only technical difference between each disc is that Blu-Ray holds more data and has twice the data transfer rate? Googling for actual differences between the two, beyond vague descriptions of "differing manufacturing processes," is difficult. Based on the assumptions above, Blu-Ray appears to be the superior format. I just want the absolute most superior movie format for posterity's sake.
When you get right down to it, which format is the best?
Holy Coitus Interuptus, Batman! I'm not amazed at the volume as much as I as am amazed about the creativity behind actually titling that many porn movies.
I imagine a brain storming session migh go like this:
"Bob, what do we have for this week?"
"Well, Tony, we have 4 girl on girl releases, 2 double penetration features, 3 gay features, and a couple of light one-on-one featurettes for cable."
"What are we going with?"
"Glad you asked, Tony. Right now, we've got Hair Pie Tango II, Bushmasters, Vagitarians from Outer Space, and Lesbian Luau; for the 2 on 1s, we have Git-R-Done and Heads or Tails?; for the gay demographics, we've got Mandango, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and Bunghole Burglars III. For the cable features, we're going with Flesh Fetish and Return to Blue Lagoon II.
"Great. We'll get 'em to graphics for the cover design and then send over to marketing..."
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Listen to MP3s? Sure. Store them as MP3s for archival purposes? Of course not. But what you use and what you store for posterity's sake are not the same.
Learn to love Alaska
Very early porn had verisimilitude because there was no porn industry and the only people who could appear in it were amatuers or at best prostitutes. Even 1950s Playboys and stag stuff was more amateur than professional, and this was true up until the 1970s when plastic surgery and porno production improved and there was a desire to make the women (and the men) "more perfect".
This went on until the women ALL had "perfect" (if often cartoonish) breasts, all the men had huge cocks and could cum like a fire hose. After a while it just stops seeming real -- the people are too perfect and the action was so predictable and soullessly acted, leaving people to not believe these people are ACTUALLY having sex.
I think this is what largely drives amateur popularity.. It seems like they're really having sex not putting on a performance, and the people involved are like people you've had sex with or interact with, adding to the voyeurism. It's more real.
I also think the lack of verisimilitude in traditional modern porn had a lot to with the rise of "ultracore" stuff (fake rapes, S&M, etc) -- the soulless performances led people to want something that was more emotionally compelling, even if it was for the "wrong" reasons.
The big problem with porn is that it is a caricature of the real thing - ie. sex with a live person. Porn is to sex as a roadrunner cartoon is to real life. Both exaggerate and distort; they don't represent or characterize.
Try turning on the news.
This has nothing to do with anything inherent in pornography, and everything to do with of what an entertainment industry (including news) consists. If this is a reason to discount pornography, then it is a reason to discount other forms of entertainment/news as well.