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Porn Industry May Not Decide Format War
nixkuroi writes "MSNBC Reports that the porn industry may be overstating their numbers and, as a result, may not be the decider of the next winning movie format. Even more interesting: Vivid Entertainment says that despite Sony's refusal to license Blu-ray to the adult industry, they've found a way to replicate the technology and will release Debbie Does Dallas on both formats. Film writer Jimmy Digiorgio states, in an email with MSNBC: 'In the past, porn embraced new technologies that were just gaining a foothold. DVDs are not new, and I don't think consumers perceive Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as new technologies. Instead, they see them as an evolution of an existing technology.... With Blu-ray [versus] HD-DVD, porn will go where the masses go.'"
one man's pron is another man's life's blood.
no way do I want to see any of these "actors" in HD, either format.
Sent from your iPad.
Porn or not, I find it quite worrying that Sony is able to dictate who is allowed to print films onto Blu-ray. If indeed that is the situation.
"...porn will go where the masses go."
Well the masses go where porn goes. Causality loop, anyone?
took over years ago
Is it significantly more worrying than that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are able to dictate who is allowed to print games designed to be played on a television onto discs?
And here I was waiting for the first shot to be fired across someone's bow.
What is the point of putting something that looks like 8mm film on HD, BluRay, or DVD for that matter?
I suggest you read Slashdot
Let's get a show of hands to see how many people googled that. No? Legs? Anyone?
I also believe Vivid's claims that the revenue of the porn industry is grossly overestimated. Yet having worked at an adult media shop and reseller I know that even though there might not be that much profit to be made there's a still a damn high volume of discs sold. And this is the important factor in this whole discussion: there might be less market share in terms of profit but higher market share in terms of media sold.
:/- spoon(_).
The 'masses' are going on the internet and ditching newspapers, magazines, music cd's, dvd's, boxed games and applications. To me it seems silly to even bother buying porn on DVD. Porn is what is expanding the popularity of the internet and so must be considered the logical choice as the next major format.
Porn Industry May Not Decide Format War
They seem to manufacture their own Blu-Ray to avoid Sony censorship _AND_ licensing fees.
Get your head checked dude. They are clearly QUALIFIED to decide the format war.
And no matter how much you hate porn. They WILL decide the format war.
End of story. Nothing to see... Move along...
I'm a very sex positive guy and have a total of 4 porno DVDs. These sit happily out in plain view within my collection of over 300 DVDs.
Being that I am an above average DVD consumer, I really don't see where the Adult Entertainment Industry thinks they have any real clout in the DVD market.
In fact, the only real use of a HD-DVD or BluRay disc I see that makes good sense for the adult sector is bundling movies in Standard Definition together on one disc to try to bolster disc sales I would imagine would be waning due to broadband video download becoming more obiquitous.
The very notion of the adult sector claiming that they are somehow driving global DVD sales... that's a laughable notion at best.
It really makes me wonder just how much drugs those guys shove up their nose in a day.
HD porn may actually finally be the porn that's good for relationships. Once you see the "actors" in glorious HD, your girlfriend/wife suddenly starts to look a whole lot more appealing.
Porn is only but one factor in who will win the format war. In the early 80's porn really made a difference in the Beta vs. VHS war because there was such a large demand for people to be able to enjoy porn in the comfort of their own homes. That was a huge driver and made a difference in VHS toppling Beta.
Fast-forward to today, does anybody think that the driver for HD Porn is as strong as being able to watch porn in your own house back then? It's not... So even though porn may be a factor in the blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war, it certainly won't play as big as a role as it did back int he 80's when it was Beta vs. VHS.
All these porn studios won't be able to ignore the millions of PS3's out there for long if there is in deed a market for this kind of stuff so in the end, like Vivid, they will find a way to bring porn to Blu-Ray if they have a chance of making a profit that way.
With Blu-ray [versus] HD-DVD, porn will go where the masses go.'"
Basically he's saying that they see no real need to choose/anoint a particular format now anyway, as they, just like everyone else, acknowledges that the DVD->HD jump is nothing compared to the VHS->DVD jump. So when, and if, a format takes hold and gains momentum, they'll just ride the wave. They have little to nothing to gain by selecting a camp now.
The vast majority of it is transmitted over the internet. With just about everyone having broadband now, it's cheaper, easier, and more private. There's likely already hi-def stuff porn available anyhow, so these new formats aren't bringing anything new to the table.
...about the porn industry having the power to decide the format war never convinced me in the first place.
Yes, it is said that the porn industry were largely responsible for VHS beating Betamax, even though the latter was technically superior. But that wasn't the only factor. Keep in mind -- Sony was incredibly restrictive of its format, whereas VHS licensing was much more liberal, so most VCR manufacturers opted to produce equipment for VHS. That's a pretty important point too.
Also, keep in mind, although the porn industry may have had a certain influence on the whole process back in the day -- that was (mainly) in the 1980s. Back then, there was no internet. I'm certain that many if not most people who would have been in the market for porn tapes back then would just download it nowadays.
Basilisk Digital
In January 11th's discusion on Adult Film Industry Chooses HD-DVD
I had posted a comment entitled Sure... lets just trust what the porn guys say predicting ALL of this early in the thread. It was not well moderated mostly I believe because at the time most Slashdotters wanted to HATE SONY so much they wanted to believe SONY would be insane enough to block all Porn on Blu-Ray.
With Disney a strong Blu-Ray backer they just didn't want to be seen as a strong porn advocate. All this crap about SONY forbidding Porn was just the Porn industry trying to swing the format war for monetary reasons. I'm surprised this article took so long to surface on Slashdot as the refutation of the no-porn-claims came within a day or two of the discussion mentioned.
Hmmmm, are I-told-you-sos get moderated +5 Insightful or -5 Troll?
Letter To Iran
I don't know why everyone seems to object to high-def porn. I personally look forward to being able to see actual strains of STD viruses crawling around on the actors.
And here I was waiting for the first shot to be fired across someone's brow.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I can only hope that Blu-Ray goes the way of Betamax, MiniDisc, and PSP Movies. It seems that Sony has a habit of developing good standards for media, but they don't gain market dominance because Sony holds on too tightly to them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So...will the original Debbie Does Dallas from 1978 be in high def? Um...no... Clearly a movie from the 70s will decide the winner of the high-definition format war.
Isn't that like, 30 years old? Is there nothing more up-to-date that is worth remastering? What's next, "The Devil and Mrs. Jones"? or, how about "Fritz the Cat"?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I suspect the adult industry does decide the format war, and that the decision indirectly came before either format was even released. You can today get any kind of porn, in any kind of media (including, but not limited to, images, text, spoken word, interactive games and movies) online for low or no cost, quickly obviating the need for cassettes or magazines sent in plain envelopes.
I would say that this by itself makes for a steep hill for either format to climb to acceptance, and it may well be the straw that causes neither format to ever gain the critical mass of users needed for it to become ubiquitous.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yes, the revenue model is moving online and the majority of porn probably is downloaded nowadays. But that's irrelevant since we're talking HD here. People aren't going to be downloading 25-30GB movies to their hard drive all that often. Especially since 5 1/4" HD/BD drives are both expensive and hard to come (since they don't plan to keep them on their HDD's indefinitely). We won't see the early adopters for porn that we will for mainstream and so the porn industry will be a deciding factor. Maybe not as large as in the Betamax/VHS war but still an important factor.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
All that matters is that the great porn soundtrack music (bom-chick-bow-bow) is in 5.1 Digital Surround Sound!
Navy Tim www.navytim.com
MSNBC Reports that...
It's not MSNBC "reporting" anything. It's Newsweek; they both share the MSN domain because Newsweek (owned by the Washington Post Company) has a deal with Microsoft (hence the MSN.com) in the same way that NBC does (MSNBC; NBC News doesn't have its own website because of their deal with Microsoft, there's just the MSNBC one). To say that "MSNBC is reporting" such and such is like saying that "Yahoo! News is reporting" when it's actually the Associated Press or Reuters.
Women are unequal and always will be. We men, so much better than women in every way, will always tack the "ress" onto "act" to symbolize this, damaging fragile girl's self-esteem and causing them to fail calculus in high school and earn less then men for equivalent work. Also, I personally have meaningless sex with brainless bimbos that I never plan to marry.
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark side of the Force.
D
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The next great leap in television technology will be hte smell-o-vision. I can't wait to smell my favorite 70's porn
I surely can't be the only one bored rigid by this 'debate'
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
...Debbie goes both ways? (Blu-ray and HD-DVD)
Tim
I believe that Sony is really playing hardball with the multi-billion dollar porn industry for a very simple reason, they want exclusive access to all of the soiled used panties that accumulate after filming. Once these Japanese men's panty hunger can be satiated, the format war will be over... heck, in that case, maybe all war will be over?
I just wonder how long it will take for an OEM to make a drive/player that will support both Blue Ray and HD-DVD. This really seems similar to "Will DVD+R or DVD-R win?"; film at 11. Move along, nothing to see here...
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt. (When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray? Do you really want to put up with DRM issues to watch porn? Confirm your identity with AACS LA, your validation key with Microsoft, and your DRM spyware with Sony? Privacy is dead, indeed.
If the Wikipedia artical on AACS is any indication, they even have a good idea of Muslix64's real identity now. (He compained about AACS to the same cryptographer/security expert using his real name....)
porn has already decided what the next format will be sometime ago...the internet.
I cannot tell that I'm exactly a big "enthusiast" or even porno consumer, but I am thinking how long it will take to see (not like I really care!) the indistinguishability real, or even "better" than real, computer generated video where the original live "model(s)" passed through special sofisticated filter/beautifier, correcting the original till the level absolutely unreal perfection excellence in sense of body constitution, movements, grace, skin tone and structure, and environment texture? So far, such rendering is very time and resource-consuming process, even if you use huge computer grid. But, with the last advances with hardware and processing power, it could change dramatically.
Something, recreated from your childhood dreams, as for example, a beauty emerging from water, with ambient sound of running stream, the babble of some exotic birds. I mean it's not necessarily should be something dirty and could be really poetic.
May be I contradict myself, but it's like the Song of Songs (Canticum canticorum), and nothing to do with porno industry at all.
The natural beauty of semi-naked or even naked woman body is very poetic, and could extinguish hard porno, brutality, sadism.
Unfortunately, no doubt the future "producers" will come up with new "advances" in sick and degenrative development of agony, torment, blood, and sadism, vindicating such stretches of sick imagination by the fact that it is not real, and nobody was hurt in the process of "creativity".
who pays for porn these days?
no way do I want to see any of these "actors" in HD, either format.
I know it's fascinating to speculate about what high resolution horrors of physical imperfection might be revealed by a 1920x1024 screen... but think about it for just a minute. That's only two megapixels. You may have never seen that in a porn video before, but if you go to a porn website or pick up a nudie magazine you'll probably find higher resolution still pictures, and behold, even the un-photoshopped pics are horror-free. Some porn stars are actually as attractive as average people; some even more so!
There may be some less photogenic stars who won't make it in a porn industry equipped with less blurry video cameras, but if anything their departures will just bring up the average for the cast who remain.
I'm proud to say, bring on the high-def porn! Wait, what am I thinking, I'm not proud of being eager to watch more porn... where's that "post anonymously" checkbox?
That's about it. The cost differential is getting smaller and will continue to shrink. I really see it being titles unless someone starts churning out $180 HDDVD players in the next 9 months. It seems like everything is coming out in BD and about 60% are coming out in HDDVD. Am I missing something? What percentage of DVD sales are porn? probably a single digit figure. That's going to offset the entire Disney library in BD? The one other thing I could see changing the shape of it is if someone really sacked up and got creative with some stuff, if I could, say, upgrade and spend an extra $10 when I go to the movie and go home with a BD or HDDVD copy of the movie I just saw (you know, 6 months before it's released to stores) I could see people doing a lot of that. Or some other kind of subsidy, maybe if you have 20 movie tickets you can buy a BD or HDDVD player for the cost of shipping or something like that. Free HDDVD players would probably make a difference.
Porn already determined what the future will be, and have implemented it. On-line distribution, DRM-free, streaming or download, use of free trailers and even full movies via bittorrent to drive people to commercial pay sites, etc. They are so far ahead of Sony, et al, that the poor SOBs don't realize that they've already lost.
AFAICT, at least 1/4 of /.ers are like me -- 30-40yo, married, with kids. There are few women, it's true, but the male population is not _all_ pimple-faced college kids anymore.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Has anyone stopped to think why Sony isn't backing the porn industry? (serious question. I haven't been following the format war much)
Seriously. This format war could mean the difference between going in the red or the black for the next five years. And one of HD-DVD's strongest footholds is the porn industry. It would be so easy for Sony to 'embrace' the porn industry and seriously deflate their opponent.
I believe the fact that they have not confirms that corporations have morals and values. Or if you will, some people within Sony believe that porn should not be mass produced, and this is a value they're willing to give up large amounts revenue over. (Are you allowed to call it a 'value' if you're not willing to give up something for it?) Now, not everyone in Slashdot agrees with Sony's morals. But it sure is heartwarming to know they have them.
Way to go Sony!
p.s. No, this doesn't mean I'm buying anything you produce.
The porn industry had porn on both formats. Consumers made the decsions. Mostly because VHS was cheaper, even if it was slightly lower quality.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Whilst its apparent that porn assisted in the VHS/Beta war back in the 80s, zoom forward a few years, and look at DVD.
Was porn a major decider in the massive takeup of DVD? Not particularly.
And right now, its the on-line business thats doing well for the porn industry. Physical media will probably continue to be a small-time player in the increasingly on-line porn industry.
And eventually, a new crop of porn directors will come up, who have learned their craft on HD Video (I can't believe I'm carrying on this conversation). The extreme close-ups make sense in a VHS 480i world, but not in an HD world.
It's no different then the rest of television adapting. Most shows are show on film, and I the last time I read about the "technology of porn" was 5 years ago discussing HD adaption, and at the time, Vivid and Wicked were shooting their "movies" on film like a normal movie (multiple angles, stationary cameras, etc.), and everyone else was doing video (amateur style zoom-ins, etc., single camera, limited audio editing).
Today, a pro Audio/Video editing rig is pretty powerful and straight forward, HD Video cameras cheap and powerful, so unless you have a preference for film (I personally do for movies, and I'll take a film transfer, grains and all, over an HD Video shot any day, but for porn, I have no idea, ask porn aficionados). I mean, watch an HD Net football or hockey game some time, since they are only shooting for HD, they pull the camera back, letting you see more action. Then watch an NFL HD broadcast, the camera is set for SD, so despite the greater resolution, most of the sides of the screen is wasted (you NEVER need the edge of the shot to go more than 2 yards beyond the deepest back, but if you have centered for SD, you just have grass behind them), etc.
Some directors, rather than whining about Pan-and-Scan videos, shoot their movies with a cinematic 2.15:1 box and a television 4:3 box on the camera. When they set their shots up, they set them up for the movie experience and the television experience they want. In that case, you aren't "loosing image to go pan-and-scan" or even worse, shooting 4:3 and zooming in for the theatrical release, you have setup the movie to be shown in two ways, two experiences.
No reason that HD porn isn't shot on video, multiple cameras, multiple mics (actual set mics, not the built in on the camera one), like a real movie, not heavily zoomed in, and editing for a 16x9 field. There is no need in HD land to do major close-ups, and you can watch the people engaged in the behavior, not just the genitalia. You might have to cut back on looping and reusing footage, but so what.
In the age of amateur/quasi-amatuer Internet porn, where anyone can take nude pictures, put them online, or get them discretely printed at CVS, and home camcorders are small and $300-$500, I would think that the professional adult industry would WANT to move up market. They need to compete with the amateur offerings, and real production values could no doubt help.
Compare HD Net's HD Video productions to the Network's film conversions. The film vs. video choice is a personal choice, there is no wrong choice. However, HD Net is SHOT for HD, it is shot assuming that you have a large, detailed screen. The Network are shot for 20" SD televisions. HD Net's production shows you the set and what's going on, the networks zoom in to a lot of head shots, ask yourself which looks better on an HD setup. The same rules apply for porn.
On the plus side, one of the complains from the adult veterans was that all the imperfections show... they don't mean pimples and normal skin imperfections, EVERY actor and actress is complaining about that, mainstream or porn, and until they stop zooming in for the HD shots, it will remain a complaint. They mean all the plastic surgery scars, weird stretch marks from enhancement, etc. If HD shows all of that, while it may not eliminate plastic surgery in the adult space, it will force people to focus on quality (a well done augmentation), not just get the biggest your body can support... and that's not a bad thing.
"porn will go where the masses go"
should be "the masses will go where porn go"
Porn will not decide next gen because it does not make sense for them to play.
In the 80's there was no internet and no broadband, so recorded media was the only way to distribute their products. Now, porn can be distributed in standard def easily over internet. It cuts out (or at least marginalizes) the middle man, it reduces up-front manufacturing costs, and they get to charge per view. It also allows for them to develop additional features for their clients.
So, why would they even want to play the HD game, especially since it would only serve to hurt the fantasy that porn sells?
What? Sony doesn't want blue movies on Blu-Ray. So why did they call it that then?
Now imagine a beowulf cluster of HD-DVD porn...
sorry, had to...
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What you meant to say was "I own over 300 adult DVD's but 4 non-adult. I can understand their clout in the industry".
Don't need to thank me for pointing out your mistake.
First off, when the porn industry helped pick VHS vs BetaMax there wasn't the internet or other good forms of media to watch porn. (Cable TV was still a luxury) What the porn industry picks now will have little bearing on which format wins.
... its a losing battle. Go back to your VHS tapes. DRM is here to stay, just get used to it.
There is also the issue of do we really *want* Bluray porn ? Who wants to see a 5' penis on a large widescreen. Any porn I purchase on Bluray must be lesbian porn.
Beyond that, if you are still complaining about the DRM in both formats, give up
The players will come down in price, by Christmas you will see players under $200 and at least 200 movies on each format. That is when you will start seeing a strong shift.
You also need to realize that most people don't have HDTVs. Despite hearing stories about people not able to get cable boxes for the superbowl in HD, HD TV is still a big luxury. Yes, you can get an ok set for under $1000 and a really nice set under $2500. But, HD sets won't be more common until the prices get closer to $400.
I guess the point of my long rant is that Bluray and/or HD-DVD is here to stay for a long while. When the price drops a lot, it will become much more mainstram. No single thing will decide which format will win. (Yes, that includes consumers)
until (succeed) try { again(); }
While Pr0n may not sell as many copies, they make up for it in cost. I refuse to pay more than $9.99 for the latest DVD of Hollywood's finest crapfest, but "Boobies, Boobies, Boobies"? As much as it costs, my friend!
What about when its two women and a horse?
If my wife looked that appealing, I wouldn't need a girlfriend in the first place!
It's not that corporations can't act in such a way that they appear to have morals. Corporations are amoral, not immoral. Corporations exist to make money. If they can make money by projecting a good "corporate image" (i.e. appearing to have morals), then they will do so. For example, if the religious right were going to boycott Sony for approving these movies for the Blu Ray format, it might be in Sony's best interests to do so. It's like your secretly racist friend who keeps his mouth shut because he's afraid of what people will think of him. It may look like morality, but it's not. If they thought they could get away with something they would do it. That's why consumers and/or the government need to keep the corporations in check.
This is also why it's so frustrating to see people who watch The Corporation say, "Well they're a corporation, they exist to make money! You can't blame them for that!" That's the exact opposite of the point of the documentary. The point is corporations don't regulate themselves, they rely on others, and consumers and the government are not regulating corporations, hence the immorality.
Of course, you can also have a situation where the CEO (and stock holders) have certain moral values and won't break them. The documentary "The Corporation" suggests this is unlikely because the company is only supposed to aim at making money. But it could happen.
Independent filmmakers who get rejected by the companies holding the keys to HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc will just print their movies on standard-definition DVD. Independent developers of arcade-style video games designed to be played on a television have no such option.
I'm really not up on most adult "websites," but from my interactions with those in the space, there is all sorts of stuff going on. The big players have different Internet divisions, one handling their studio stars (the original article mentions the interesting affect of how the old Hollywood studio system, or exclusive contracts, remains with the big adult players), one handling Internet only stuff, etc. The "amateur porn" is different levels of amateurism. There probably are small time people (the good webcam stuff), but most of it is small-medium Internet porn businesses, they will run anywhere from a few sites to dozens of sites.
Also, at least 5 years ago, their were content selling companies, that would sell royalty free "content" of adult material. Independents could purchase this "content" and create their own adult websites.
I would assume like all industries, the market has consolidated. I would also assume that since 10 years ago amateur sites were generally a poor single mother getting paid cash for each photo shoot by someone that wanted to run an amateur site, and those sites are probably still floating around, I would guess that most of those sites were purchased by aggregating adult sites that want the link-pop and residual click-over traffic from years of running the sites.
My comment about small time players wasn't so much about the adult industry. If you look at the numbers in the article, the big players like Vivid were moving $100m/year in DVDs. There are 3-4 major players. If there are between 700m and 2.1b in DVD sales (depending on the estimates, AVN said 2.1b, experts said it's probably a third of that), then even with 5 players moving 500m, we have between 200m and 1.6b in revenues not accounted for here.
Who are those players? What resources do they have?
If I am in charge of strategic planning at a porn company, the threats to my industry appear to be: commodization by free porn, or increased costs from technical changes. Look at the video game industry, free entertainment canibalizes some things from the bottom, but the biggest risk is the escalating costs of producing a video game, which squeezes out FAR more players from making games than free tetris sites squeeze out the puzzle game market.
If I am sitting in the CEO's office evaluating BR/HDDVD, if I'm a minor (DVD was risky, because DVD's cost less to produce (on the margin), but creating a master was much more expensive. That's why Anime and other niche products took so long to migrate, you needed mastering costs to come down. Now anyone with a Mac and some cheap software (the Apple Pro stuff, not iLife) can crank out a DVD, you move to HD because then only people with real resources can plan.
If you watch porn move to DivX instead of HD Codecs, you may do well in the beginning, but all your advantages of being a big player count for less in online PPV than they do in HD Discs/PPV.
Did anyone here really believe that pornography ever *was* a driver of technology?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The film being released is, according to the article linked to by MSNBC, "Debbie Does Dallas Again", not "Debbie Does Dallas".