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Media Television Entertainment

Adult Film Industry Moving To HD DVD 527

Posted by kdawson from the BetaMax-deja-vu dept.
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).
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Adult Film Industry Chooses HD-DVD More

Adult Film Industry Chooses HD-DVD

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  • I'm not sure I want my porn in HD (Score:5, Funny)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:13PM (#17564434)
    Too much detail can be a bad thing ... unless you're into that sort of thing.

  • Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:14PM (#17564440)
    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 [wired.com]. How many more PSPs to adults did that revelation sell again?

    • Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot? (Score:4, Funny)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:32PM (#17564754)
      I'd always said that the porn industry was fully capable of going both ways

      Must. Resist. Urge to comment.

    • Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:33PM (#17564794)
      The more I have thought about it the more I think that the 'best' (and probably most plausable) outcome to this whole Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war is that both formats will retain enough support for the first few years that eventually every 'Movie Player' will support both formats; at that point the consumer doesn't care anymore and the each of the 'camps' will be fighting over content providers.

      Ultimately, if I see this as the likely outcome next christmas I will probably buy a HD-DVD player because I will have no worries about the content I buy not playing in future devices.

      • Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Heir Of The Mess ( 939658 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:47PM (#17565018)
        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 [theregister.co.uk]. Move ahead to August 2006 and they are still just talking about it Here [hometheaterblog.com] 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:plus the features!! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by russ1337 ( 938915 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:36PM (#17564860)
      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mysticalfruit ( 533341 )
        I'm suspecting that feature will land in the same category as multiangle DVD's. Yeah there are some pornos that use the technology, but I'm suspecting the logistics of coordinating X number of cameras instead of one is the reason. Also, I bet if you went into a porno store and asked everybody in the place if they knew about the multiangle technology, I'm betting the response would be less than 1 in 10.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pembo13 ( 770295 )
      I think they lost any 'kid friendly' image when they showed an ad with a demon possessed baby.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RexRhino ( 769423 )
        Or perhaps when they featured a white woman beating up a black woman, to celebrate the new white PSPs?!

    • Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:52PM (#17565110)
      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? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @09:47PM (#17567778) Homepage
        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.

    • Re:Protect Reputation or Shoot Foot? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MasterC ( 70492 ) <cmlburnett@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:52PM (#17565120) Homepage
      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.
      Along with this point, why does Sony get to ride the moral-high-horse after their rootkit debacle?

      "No, we don't want porn released on our products, but secretly installing crippling software on computers -- regardless if people accept the EULA -- we fully support (*ahem* until we get caught and sued *ahem*)."

      Just me or is that a big hypocritical? On the other hand, I'm sure there is a "business philosophy" disconnect between the HD DVD and music groups/divisions.
    • 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.

      And there is the problem, that also affects things like DRM: trying to control too much. The industry is so intent on controlling everything they own and not allow the indivual fair use, that they seem more ready to shoot themselves in the foot than letting have other people have any sense of using it a way that makes it worth while.
    • ... company. Japanese society has one of the most warped views on sexuality (I mean this in a good way :), and yet a Japanese company is anti-porn? That's just too funny.

  • VHS vs. Beta (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:15PM (#17564464)
    You mean the mythical VHS versus Beta where the "better" format lost, or the _real_ VHS vs. Beta war where the better format (longer tapes, for one thing) actually won but where people keep propogating the "Beta was better than VHS!" myth?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by arniebuteft ( 1032530 )
      Dual-format players that cost only a little more than a single-format player are quite probable in the HD-DVD vs. BD war. With VHS and Beta, it was all or nothing - the technology didn't lend itself easily to a dual-format system. With the HD war, you're dealing with spinning, shiny, dimpled disks of plastic being read by a 405nm laser. Sure, the disks need different optics for reading, and the data's arranged a bit differently, but it shouldn't cost that much more for a dual-format player, once the tech

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Babbster ( 107076 )
      Amen. It was all about recording (buying tapes just wasn't affordable at the time and rentals were a bigger hassle at first) and Beta was inferior in that regard thanks to VHS's longer recording times. Now, the situation is reversed in that people are less likely to care about the increased storage on Blu-ray because they'd rather do their TV recording on a hard drive (be it Tivo, their satellite/cable box or a PC media center).

      I don't know that porn will be a deciding factor in this format war (especi

    • Re:VHS vs. Beta (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:50PM (#17565074)
      Right on. I think the only reason more people don't point out the parallels between HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray to the last format war (SACD vs. DVD-Audio) was that SACD and DVD-Audio were both such catastrophic failures that only audiophiles even know what they were. Because in the mean time, mp3s took over.

      And if VHS was 'technically inferior' to Betamax, mp3 compared to SACD/DVD-A would be off the charts bad. And guess what people chose?

  • It's Over (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The format wars have been decided.

  • History repeats (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:16PM (#17564474)
    It really is VHS vs. BetaMax all over again. And it's even Sony again pushing the more expensive and less open option!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 )
      No, it's not. VHS won because it had a longer running time and could therefore hold feature films. By the time BetaMax was able to support the longer running time, VHS had become the norm. People like storylines, and the porn industry driving VHS' success is a storyline they love to repeat regardless of its lack of truth.

      Also, porn is an Internet thing now. It's free. Why would I care either way about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray porn?

  • one big difference (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arazor ( 55656 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:16PM (#17564476)

    In the VHS vs Beta days you couldn't get high quality porn for free. I want HD DVD to win as I have invested in it but I just don't think this will be a big push for team HD DVD.

    • Re:one big difference (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:45PM (#17564994)
      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).

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by BumBiscuit ( 744070 )
        I'm not sure whether HD-DVD discs have a scratchproof layer out of the box, but the discs containing porn will gradually acquire a thin veneer of transparent goo that should provide some protection.

  • So in other words (Score:5, Funny)

    by k31bang ( 672440 ) * on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:16PM (#17564494) Homepage
    So in other words, Blu-ray is...erm Fucked.

  • Welp. (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Pojut ( 1027544 )
    The cat(house) is out of the bag now. This was the news many people that have been following the so-called "war" have been waiting for: which side will the porn industry go with?

    Granted, this is just one production company, however it can be assured that more are to follow. Personally, I don't really care which side wins; with the possibility of holographic storage so close in the future (~5-10 years, if industry estimations are correct) I most likely will be sticking with DVD until then.

    Despite the news
    • HD-DVD is FAR cheaper both in purchasing and manufacturing.

      So has it been for many technologies. Cheaper wins over Better if Cheaper is "good enough.":

      IDE vs SCSI
      x86 vs RISC
      Ethernet vs token ring

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rhombic ( 140326 )
        So has it been for many technologies. Cheaper wins over Better if Cheaper is "good enough.":

        IDE vs SCSI
        x86 vs RISC


        OK, I'm with you so far...

        Ethernet vs token ring


        Have you ever installed & maintained a token ring network, and kept it going when idiot 1users would try to "fix" things when they had a problem? Oh god, the horror, the horror.

        The right one won with that battle, IMO

  • HD-DVD: It's good enough for pr0n; it's good enough for you!

  • Credit Card ready (Score:5, Funny)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:21PM (#17564556) Journal
    Whew! Thanks for this news, Slashdot! Now I can finally feel confident buying an HD-DVD player!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Elsan ( 914644 )
      I was going to post the same comment but was busy... doing... something...

  • Profit? (Score:5, Funny)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:22PM (#17564576) Journal
    1.Create rootkit
    2.Create new HD Disc spec
    3.Shoot feet
    4.??????
    5.Profit

  • Looks like... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kn0tw0rk ( 773805 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:24PM (#17564608) Journal
    Sony blew their chances.

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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pojut ( 1027544 )
      I don't know the answer to your question, but I can tell you this:

      Thanks to the net, I can find copies of MANY of my long lost favourites:

      Bitches of Westwood
      A Clockwork Orgy
      Sex Trek the Next Penetration (and the sequal, the Search for Sperm)
      etc.

      (I'm not kidding, it is really easy to find those hard-to-find titles now)

  • Oh its really hacked now... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tgatliff ( 311583 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:26PM (#17564672)
    With the porn industry behind HD-DVD now, there is little doubt that the HD-DVD format will be hacked into oblivion. Nothing inspires developers more than the possability of free porn....
  • Double entendre intended

    Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry so this is a big deal, and speaks volumes about winning the "standard" race.
    You have millions of Xbox 360 owners who can now watch porn on their Xbox's. That will, most definitely, be a big deal and selling point, between friends. I'm sure the porn industry will use this, tie-in, as a selling point too. Gaming meets porn is a natural IMHO. It's the next step in enterspankment. Yes, I have coined a new a catchy phrase!

    It's going to be sweet to u

  • Oh noes!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mcknation ( 217793 ) <nocarrierNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:28PM (#17564682) Homepage


    I've got Blu-Balls!

    /ducks and runs

    /McK
  • Actually both articles read more like he-said she-said. No where is anyone quoting Sony as not allowing adult content. I suspect this will all turn out to be
    rumor and untrue motivated by a desire to swing the HD industry one way or the other.

    The adult content industry is much more sensitive to distribution cost than major studios. Odd they are only now complaining when Blu-Ray seems to finally have the upper hand.

  • HD-DVD will win over "Blu-Ray" because of names... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:29PM (#17564708)
    "HD-DVD" will win over "Blu-Ray" because of the name of the tech anyway...

    Average consumer: "WTF is Blue Ray?"
    Answer: "It lets you watch high-definition DVDs."
    Average consumer: "Is there a Red Ray?"

    Average consumer: "WTF is HD-DVD?"
    Answer: "It lets you watch high-definition DVDs."
    Average consumer: "Sorry I was such a dumbass."

  • Right on (Score:5, Funny)

    by James_G ( 71902 ) <james@globalmegac[ ].org ['orp' in gap]> on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:33PM (#17564790)
    HD-DVD DVDA! I can hardly wait.

    (Anyone who doesn't know the reference should watch this [imdb.com])
  • Sony still doesn't learn from its mistakes?
  • Porn might have been a deciding factor in beta vs. VHS, but that was before the almighty internet tubes. I guess most porn people have comes in handy divx or similar formats. Heck i'd fell bad paying for porn, supporting that industry.

  • PS3 has no porn then.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by yeoua ( 86835 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:38PM (#17564882)
    So does this mean that the PS3 is a kiddy system because it won't actually have any "adult media" while the XBOX360 can?

  • It's just wrong, wrong, wrong (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:44PM (#17564982)
    As a Republican I would like to publicly state my strong opposition to HD-DVD.

    If we let HD-DVD win, we let the pornographers win.

  • Bad Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:58PM (#17565208) Homepage

    This has been on /. before, but you can't call the war based on this.

    When VHS/Beta came around, there was no real way to watch that kind of content at home before. That was HUGE. Right now, that exists in the form of VHS and DVDs.

    People wanted VHS. Going from nothing to a way to record TV or watch movies at home when you want was HUGE. DVD->Whatever is just going to higher quality. There is no massive benefit like before.

    Then there is the computer factor. You know where I could watch high quality content without buying a $500+ player? My computer. You know where I can find tons of FREE content? My computer. The only competition that VHS had was "those kind" of theaters in the "bad part of town". People already are in the privacy of their homes

    Then there is the higher quality is not better argument.

    Let's face is, no one cares that much about this battle. It's almost NOTHING LIKE VHS/BETA. Same field (home video), same circumstance (two competing formats), same players (Sony on one side, this time with other people). But the reasons why people will choose a format are different. VHS was longer. Blu-ray is longer, but but since HD-DVD isn't limited to 60min like Beta was that isn't as much of an issue.

    Can't compare the situations. Doesn't hold up.

    Random theory: Blu-ray will win in end. Why? Cooler name. I have no idea.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @06:36PM (#17565740)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The VHS/Beta Porn myth sufaces again (Score:5, Informative)

    by tgibbs ( 83782 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @08:20PM (#17566946)
    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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by trailerparkcassanova ( 469342 )
      I know for a fact prOn producers used Beta machines. In the mid-80s I wrote the SW for the industry standard video cassette duplication system. These supported every video cassette duplicator available which included, besides VHS machines, Sony, Sanyo and NEC Beta machines. One of the problems cassette manufacturers had with Beta was that the duplicating machines weren't very robust. They were for the most part consumer electromechanicals in an industrial box. A large facility would have 5000+ machines, mos

  • What about the Cataloge... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:16PM (#17568604)
    In the 70s and early 80s, most if not all porn was produced using film, and then, maybe, transferred to Betamax or VHS. So, our parents, if they went to the XXX cinema in town, enjoyed High Def Widescreen porn long before we did.

              While most of that material would be considered crap by todays standards of beauty of the performers, or production values, since is done in Film, all that material is succeptible to be converted to HD-DVD.

              I, for one, would pay for a good HD transfer of certain movies of that era, like "For the Love of Pleasure" or "The Devil in Ms. Jones" or "Behind the Green Door"

              The only problem I forsee in this scheme is the tangle that the copyrights is now, with long gone companies being acquired by others time and again, and resellers in other countries geting non-clear rights.

              The other useful effect of porn's entry in the HD-DVD camp is that their economies of scale will make Disk pressing Even cheaper, both for porn HD-DVDs as well as for regular content HD-DVDs

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