Adult Film Industry Moving To HD DVD

profet writes "One of the heavyweights in the war between BlueRay and HD DVD has chosen its format. Various members of the adult film industry have decided on HD-DVD. The article says the reasons seem to be based primarily on cost of manufacturing. History has shown that the porn industry can be a driving factor for technology, as it was in deciding for the VHS format over BetaMax." Heise reports that US BlueRay press plants are refusing the adult industry's business (in German).

Comments

Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot?

[HTH NE1]

In the previous discussions about pornography decided the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle, I'd always said that the porn industry was fully capable of going both ways, and a few others besides (with the double-entendre wholly intended).

However, hearing that Sony itself has been pressuring the porn industry away from the Blu-Ray format, it seems they've shot themselves in the foot and mooted their brand from competition.

I suspect they want to keep the format that is used in their gaming system free of purient-interest content and not be a portal for pornography, preserving it as a "kid friendly" device. And with a limited number of facilities able to produce BD disks compared to DVD houses refitted for HD-DVD production, that scarcity allows Sony more control. Perhaps Sony is still stinging with the parental backlash against kids putting porn on their PSPs. How many more PSPs to adults did that revelation sell again?

Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot?

[Heir Of The Mess]

18 months ago I read an article that said Toshiba said they had a triple layer HD-DVD disk which holds 45GB, which pretty much makes the extra expense of Blue-Ray pointless. I read that Here. Move ahead to August 2006 and they are still just talking about it Here and say the spec won't be finalised until mid 2007. They should make sure that HD-DVD players are ready now for this format, and can be firmware upgraded to read them. Of course even if they don't, the next gen HD-DVD players will still be able to play all the HD-DVD movies you already bought, so looking at that it's probably still the better investment.

Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot?

[Total_Wimp]

I know a lot of people say that neither Blue-Ray or HD-DVD will win as the next format. The winner, they say, will be broadband and hard drive. In general, I disagree. Enough bandwidth to do High Def is years away, as is the hard drive space to store very many movies. People are going to be hitting the stores for discs of various kinds for quite some time.

But porn is different. There already exists a thriving movie download industry. The quality regularly improves as bandwidth allows. Small studios coexist with large ones without the conltroling cartels that force "legitimate" indie movies to distribution hell. In short, unlike in the "legitimate" movie industry, customers have both accepted the quality and continued to pay for downloadable content in large numbers, despite the greater production values and higher resolution of DVD.

I have no doubt that many people will buy HD-DVD to view porn. There's a market for higher quality and physical media. But I'll be very suprised if the download scene doesn't outpace the HD-DVD scene all the way to the point where HD downloads start making practical sense for everyone.

TW

Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot?

[HappySqurriel]

For most people in the world this is the standard situation:

You have a wife and 3 kids -> you're not buying a $3000 TV
You have a wife and 3 kids -> you're not buying a $500/$1000 DVD player

The format war will be over before the average family even knows there has been a format war.

From what I have seen, early technology adopters seem to be the young single well employed men or older men with no children living at home who are still empolyed; in either case they are (probably) interested in porography because they have no woman or no woman who is interested in sex. I (used to) know a woman who worked in a video-rental store that had an adult section and one of her comments was that it seemed like men lost their interest in the 'Adult Section' at 30 and regained it at 50.

Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot?

[Lumpy]

Enough bandwidth to do High Def is years away, as is the hard drive space to store very many movies.

Really??? then why am I able to store HD content as Xvid at only 5.5 gig at full resolution and 120 minute length??? It looks FAN-TAS-TIC on customers Projectors and high end LCD and plasmas. This is a conversion from a HD-DV recording shot with a Canon XL1HD at the Michigan international speedway. We use it to show the customer what their display is capable of ...

I can easily fit a HD movie in a standard dual layer DVD. There is no need for HDDVD or BLU RAY for HD video content. and hard drive space will easily hold many many movies at that bitrate.

The only reason BluRay or HD-DVD exists is to introduce a new DRM type and licensing revenue stream.

Looks like...

[kn0tw0rk]

Sony blew their chances.

But a semi-serious question though: Have sales of porn movies decressed with the greater availability of online content?

Re:I'm not sure I want my porn in HD

[Shrubbman]

Actually, (and this is legit) this was shot in HD, so I imagine it'll get a re-release soon enough. ;')

Re:plus the features!!

[russ1337]

listing to 'this week in tech', last week and someone (Leo / Dvorak) was saying they visited the HD-DVD booth who's rep's were all about how movies can be filmed with 'skinable features'.. and gave the example of Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift where they got to select the color of the cars....

I think Leo went on to predict the Porn industry will win the race with this feature alone...

Slashdotters will be able to superimpose their own face over Ron Jeremy's and finally get to see themselves (albeit a hairy version) do nasty things to girlz.

Re:one big difference

[rolfwind]

Off topic - but does HD-DVD have a scratchproof layer like Blu-Ray licensed from TDK? (Based on my TDK scratchproof discs, this stuff works great and would influence my decision. I lost more than a few CDs/DVDs due to scratches).

tired of HD-DVD called "technically inferior"

[2ms]

I would like to call for the desistance of calling HD-DVD "technically inferior" on the simple-minded basis of its only very limitedly lower theoretical storage capacity. This seems to be a very popular thing to do by people who like to think they know what they are talking about. However, it is actually stupidly simplistic and inaccurate.

Blu-ray is capable of having some more storage capacity. Meanwhile, HD-DVD disks are cheaper to make, do not scratch as easily, are more backwards compatible, have a more capable and author friendly development environment/UI system, more advanced video encoding algorithms (as of at least very recently), and support the highest available resolution available (1080p)!

Apparently, what people mean by "technically superior" is "has a little more storage capacity". I prefer my way of looking at things -- HD-DVD is "better" and was more intelligently designed because it has all the advantages above over BluRay. It appears that Sony reinvented the wheel for negligible gain, yet many-fold setback.

Re:I'm not sure I want my porn in HD

[Kankraka]

We have that title in the store i work in :), a video rental place. There's a softcore version, and the X rated version. The X rated version comes with both the DVD and HD-DVD version of the title. The softcore one is only a very edited DVD suitable for an R or 18A rating. However, because of the title, it's put right beside Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I'd be a liar if I said unsuspecting parents never grabbed the wrong title on many occasions. Many, MANY irate phone calls have been received by me and my fellow staff due to this title, and it's entertaining every time :D.