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).

Re:VHS vs. Beta

[Osty]

About 7 or 8 years ago I was doing some work experience at a tv studio. They used to record everything on Betamax for archiving because a) the quality was slightly better, and b) the recordings would keep better quality for longer.

Are you sure they didn't use Betacam [wikipedia.org]? It's derived from, but not the same as, Betamax. Betamax recorded a composite signal while Betacam recorded component and at a faster tape speed, thus providing better video and audio quality (suitable for archival purposes).

I suspect also that the bigger physical size also made them harder to lose :p

Betamax was smaller than VHS. Betacam tapes were originally the same form-factor as Betamax tapes, but later L tapes were larger than both.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

The three disc collectors edition (right here in front of me) came with the regular and HD-DVD version... over a year ago. It's a Digital Playground film, too, which somewhat contradicts what's in TFA.

As has been suggested in other posts, HD pr0n has TOO MUCH detail. It's similar to what was seen with the news/sports casters when HD broadcasts first became available; serious makeup adjustments were necessary.

Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot?

[eugman]

To be fair one of the ads had the black woman winning and another where they were evenly matched. But who wants to be fair right?

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

[JohnnyLocust]

Too much detail can be a bad thing ... unless you're into that sort of thing.

No kidding. I'm still jittery from seeing Edward James Olmos in highdef. EEEK!

Re:This is big "fucking" news

[Squirmy McPhee]

Complete fabrication. Porn is a large industry but not larger then the Theatric movie release industry. The 12-15 number is based on interviews AVN did then re-enforced in Frobes for mentioning it.

Yes. According to a bunch of adult industry folks [boingboing.net], the real figure is more likely $400-500 million annually, which makes much more sense than $12-15 billion if you believe the guy from the BoingBoing post who says $216 million is spent making porn movies each year. The $12-15 billion number includes the entire adult entertainment industry -- strip clubs, sex toys, etc. in addition to porn movies, but keeps getting pushed as the size of the "porn industry".

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

[Babbster]

Nope, the disc you're referring to isn't HD-DVD format. It's a DVD containing an HD version of the moviet encoded with WMV. If you want to play it, just stick it in your PC.

For the record, the first true porn HD-DVD is (seriously) "Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre" from Wicked Pictures. The next one looks like it will be "Island Fever 3" from Digital Playground.

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

[TheSpoom]

1. Register [thepiratebay.org] on The Pirate Bay.
2. Be over 18.
3. Select "show porn" in preferences.

Um, that's what I heard, anyway.

Re:History repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasnt' thinking specifically of the software stack. Sony tries to hold tightly to things they invent; note that Sony is telling the content guys what kind of discs they are allowed to make. (At least Sony is saying "no XXX".)

Also, the cost barriers are much lower for HD-DVD. It takes expensive, new equipment to make a Blu-Ray factory; if you already own a DVD factory it is not too much money to upgrade to be able to make HD-DVD. And it is possible to make a disk that is DVD on one side and HD-DVD on the other, while I have read that it's not possible to do that with Blu-Ray. But I think I saw something recently that someone said they had figured out a way to do it so I'm not sure.

Re:Is 45 enough?

[HappySqurriel]

I'm no expert on video compression, but shouldn't it require six times as many bytes to store HD video at the same compression rate? That means you'd need 51 GB just to store the same length movie as a dual-layer DVD.

If you were using the same compression algorithm, yes it would require that much more data ...

We're fortunate that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are not limited by the same compression algorithm that DVD is ...

DVD uses MPEG 2 [wikipedia.org] compression and (IIRC) Blu-Ray and HD-DVD can use H.264 [wikipedia.org] and H.264 [wikipedia.org] can fit (practically) the same ammount of video data at 1080p on a DVD that MPEG 2 can fit (at 480p) on a DVD.

The VHS/Beta Porn myth sufaces again

[tgibbs]

The notion that porn was available only on VHS is entirely myth. I lived in New York City during the height of the VHS/Beta wars. At that time, VHS had only a modest lead. Video stores had large beta and VHS departments (these were video sales stores; rental stores did not become common until later on). And both the beta and VHS departments had substantial porn sections. Videos, no matter what the rating, were quite expensive, selling for close to $100 (which was real money in those days)

Sony had chosen to go after the high-end market, a practice that had been successful with other items in their audio and video equipment line. Sony imagined that VCRs would be used mostly for TV time-shifting, with sales of modest numbers of (expensive) prerecorded videos to enthusiasts. Sony players tended to be the videophile favorite, because they usually got the hot new features such as stable still display and hifi sound a bit earlier, with VHS catching up a few months later. The cheaper VHS machines sold to the more budget-conscious buyers. What Sony failed to anticipate was the emergence of rental outlets as a major market force. The first rental stores that I saw carried both beta and VHS (and yes, all ratings in both formats). But since the cheaper VHS machines were a bit more common, they stocked VHS a bit more heavily. Consumers noted this that the rental selection was better for VHS, and began favor VHS machines even more heavily. In response, to the increased demand for VHS tapes, the rental outlets cut back still further on beta to favor VHS. Within a couple of years after rental outlets became common, I began to see stores eliminating their beta departments. Around that time, Sony dropped the price of beta VCRs to make them competitive with VHS, but by then it was too late for Sony to catch up.

Re:Is 45 enough?

[Parafilmus]

You're correct that 1080p requires 6 times as much data at the same compression rate.

Thankfully, compression algorithms have improved since DVDs were invented. Both HD-DVD and BlueRay support H.264 compression. Compared to the MPEG2 compression used for regular DVDs, this new format yields better image quality at a smaller data rate.

Click here [balooga.com] to see a comparison between H.264 and an older MPEG4 codec.

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

[CastrTroy]

Or easier. Go to Torrentspy.com. Click On Latest Torrents, Check on the Adult Checkbox, And uncheck all others if necessary.

Re:Is 45 enough?

[iainl]

Your thinking isn't that far out at all. Which is why Fox are releasing not terribly long movies on 50Gb Blu-Ray discs with minimal extras.

The difference is that many Blu-Ray discs are encoded with poor old MPEG-2, which with its fixed 8-pixel-square macroblocks is old tech never designed for HD. Just about all HD-DVDs, and many new Blu-Ray discs are using MPEG-4 variants (usually H.264 for Blu-Ray, VC-1 for HD-DVD, though there is some crossover for both) which are several times as efficient; even at quality settings which completely shame the best MPEG-2 Blu-Ray discs the latest HD-DVDs are only using up 15-20Gb with the main video stream.