Porn Industry Ready To Drop Flash 249
An anonymous reader writes "Here's an interesting new angle to the ongoing Flash-HTML5 debate. Digital Playground, one of the major adult film studios, said it would drop Flash today if all browsers were HTML5-ready (*cough*, IE8, *cough*). The company's founder said, 'Flash brings everything to a crawl and has an impact on battery life. With HTML5, there is no reason to show our content in Flash.' Digital Playground also indicated that it does not expect 3-D to gain mass acceptance any time soon."
Re:never gonna work (Score:3, Insightful)
No 3d? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would 3D gain faster acceptance? Who wouldn't want tits to basically jump out of your screen and nearly hit you in the face?
Re:never gonna work (Score:5, Insightful)
Think you have it the other way around ... porn has driven tech industry and consumer electronics for a very long time. No other vendor has the power that PORN does , if porn industry unilaterally decided tomorrow to adopt HTML5 .. in very short time, every computer on the planet would have upgraded their browser. period.
Yeah that sounds nice - but using what codec? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, everyone seems to be ready to drop flash for video playback, but what codec will their videos be encoded with?
As it stands today:
- Use h264 and all firefox users will be left off
- use theora and almost everyone will be left off
- use VP8 and most browsers won't support it
- use X and Y browser will not support it.
use flash and... 99% browsers will support it. Having said that, I hate flash, but I guess the world is not ready for HTML5 just yet, mainly because of the codecs issue.
Lets hope VP8 is a success! :-)
One guy says... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia says this company is pretty influential in the porn industry, though not the only player. I suppose it's sort-of interesting to hear what he thinks. Though there's no real meat to the article, it's almost like an anti-Flash astro-turf.
I think all content producers are generally looking forward to moving to HTML5 video. That doesn't mean that Flash is dead. It could potentially mean that in 3-5 years Flash will not be used for video. Right now, Flash is pretty much the only option. In a year or two, HTML5 video will be a reasonable competitor. After that, well I guess it's up to Adobe to figure out ways of making their product more appealing than the baseline (which is HTML5). But they have a dominant position now, support of major players, and seem committed to improving their product. It's hard to discount them on the word of one porn producer.
..Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this is just nonsese.
1. Digital Playground are nobodies in the online porn market. Yes, they produce a lot of content, but it's all for the DVD market.
2. One studio saying something isn't representative of an entire industry. It's actually called a 'Press Release'
3. The vast majority of adult sites allow you to pick your poison in terms of video. Streaming is normally done via flash [.x/h264 mp4 being the norm], and allowing downloads in AVI/DivX/WMV/MPEG formats.
4. What porn does provide is a solid statistics cross-section of internet users - and from the figures I see, flash usage is 96% or higher. The vast majority of purchasing users aren't high tech, they don't use noscript, they don't think flash is evil.
5. Porn (and any commercial) sites aim to make their sites as available to as many people as possible. Forcing users to upgrade browsers, attempting to change browsing habits, etc, is only going to lower the bottom line.
Re:The Porn Industry is never wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of what people may think of them, for some reason the porn industry does seem to have a much better picture of technology and how to utilize it versus the more mainstream market.
Back in the days of VHS and such naturally there are good examples, but even in modern times it's clear. The porn industry was doing online distribution of content long before mainstream media was. The few porn companies that were utilizing DRM early on seem to have dropped the idea. Heck it seems like the de-facto method of distribution for porn these days has already shifted from DVD's to online subscription based website chains that release daily updates (typically a scene per day) - NaughtyAmerica.com is a perfect example. Every now and then they'll take their online content and release it in a DVD compilation for the luddites, but the main distribution method is online.
Now, I realize that PART of this is that porn is unbelievably cheap to produce (particularly with the rise of "gonzo" style where there's no longer even any attempt at acting or a story - they usually just say "Hi!" and get down to business), but still, I think there are lessons to be learned here.
Re:never gonna work (Score:1, Insightful)
Where the porn industry leads, the rest of the tech world follows.
It happened with the internet, it happened with DVD players, it will happen with 3DTV, and it might happen with Flash.
Except it didn't, it hasn't and...well, it might, but only in the same post hoc ergo propter hoc sense applied to Betamax.
Re:Yeah that sounds nice - but using what codec? (Score:2, Insightful)
You realize that HTML5 allows a content provider to provide his videos in *all* formats at the same time? The browser decides which one it picks and plays.
Granted. This consumes more space on the server and costs time for encoding. But should it really be that much of a problem?
Re:No 3d? (Score:5, Insightful)
For tits, yeah, that'd be great. But there are often also dicks.
You're over thinking it. From now on all 3D porn is limited to lesbian orgies, I think everyone can agree on that.
Re:never gonna work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah that sounds nice - but using what codec? (Score:3, Insightful)
WebM+Flash fallback
Re:never gonna work (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I get a job there? I'm sure I'd enjoy the work.
But seriously, I wish people would stop overestimating porn's influence. Its annual revenue is less than 1% of total internet revenue. Its perceived impact on the world (or technology) is no more real than a 12 inch long penis, or the "18 year old" models that are actually 27.
Re:Porn Industry Ready To Drop Flesh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Porn Industry Ready To Drop Flesh (Score:2, Insightful)
Not sure if you realize but amateur porn has taken off quite a bit, they're as real as you can get, actual couples having sex in loving relationships (but of course they are still voyeurous and adventurous for letting you watch). It's far better than the shit the pro's have, and with easier access to higher quality cameras it's getting even better in quality.
What scares the producers is that people release it for free, for the love of sharing it so expect more and more in the future as attitudes are more relaxed and accepted.
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but this being 2010, you can just scream 'terrorist' and watch him never make that mistake again.