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HD DVD Gets a Leg Up on Blu-ray

Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 7:30 PM - by

The HD DVD/Blu-ray battle has moved into a new position now that the adult film industry has settled on HD DVD as the successor to the current DVD disc format. Even though top industry players announced last year that they plan to support the Blue-ray disc format, four adult titles were recently released in HD DVD format by Digital Playground, according to SG Knox. Other adult film companies are likely to follow suit, and Sony, the company that helped develop Blu-ray, played a big part in that decision.

The shift to the HD DVD camp came after the adult production company Digital Playground found that it couldn't find any Blu-ray disc manufacturers that would master its titles. The reason manufacturers are shying away from the genre is because Sony isn't excited about seeing adult titles in the Blu-ray format, and they fear that Sony will pull their manufacturing licenses.

Historically, the adult film industry has been a catalyst in the standardization of formats. After adult titles shifted heavily to the VHS video tape format, the better quality Betamax tapes disappeared from store shelves.

The move means that other Blu-ray supporters, including Apple Inc., will have to re-evaluate which drive standard to include in future computer products. Although Blu-ray does offer potentially better quality, it may not matter if other major players in the video industry decide to move over to the HD DVD camp with Digital Playground and its peers.

A final winner in the next generation DVD standard battle, however, has not yet been named. But with big-name adult entertainment companies endorsing HD DVD, the focus looks to be shifting away from Blu-ray.

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JimWCB said:

member since 29 Aug 2002 with 301 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Jan 11, 2007 9:45 pm

Wow... talk about shooing themselves in the foot.

They don't like certain content so they won't let pressing plants make BluRay discs for the adult film producers.

Result... more HD-DVD content.

I prefer the bluRay format, but this really will likely shift things more towards the HD-DVD camp. Concidering VHS, DVD, and the Internet both got early boosts from the Adult industry, this may be Sony's blunder that kills BluRay.

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Jan 11, 2007 10:43 pm

Just today at the Digital Bits (an *-DVD website), the editor pointed out that HD had very little to offer at the CES.

While yes, pornos do signal technology revolutions, there's plenty of porno-innovations that never took off (the DVD condom, for instance, came out in 1999 and no one's having protecting digital versatile playback today, 7 years later).

Besides, this is America--imagine the publicity if Sony came out and said Toshiba was supporting pornographers, while they were doing their best to stop them. I'll be there'd be a lot more Blu-Ray exclusive companies...

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:13 am

Uh oh... all of sudden, Sony is getting blue-nosed?!? Sheesh - everybody (or those who stroll through the Internet red light district) know that the Japanese has the most perverted adult comic books in the world. Now, they are getting all Puritan?!?

Buh bye Blu-ray... Did Betamax have that blue-nosed problem with the adult industry or was the Betamax kit more expensive and time consuming?

If Sony decides to reverse its Puritan decision, will Blu-ray catch up after all that marketing and financial damage has been done?

Still shaking my head over this...

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Jonkun227 said:

member since 02 Mar 2004 with 238 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:05 am

Guest wrote:
Uh oh... all of sudden, Sony is getting blue-nosed?!? Sheesh - everybody (or those who stroll through the Internet red light district) know that the Japanese has the most perverted adult comic books in the world. Now, they are getting all Puritan?!?

Buh bye Blu-ray... Did Betamax have that blue-nosed problem with the adult industry or was the Betamax kit more expensive and time consuming?

If Sony decides to reverse its Puritan decision, will Blu-ray catch up after all that marketing and financial damage has been done?

Still shaking my head over this...
Gotta love generic, ignorant stereotypes of cultures! Certain Japanese companies produce pornographic manga and therefore all companies in Japan are guilty of the same. If one company says they don't support such content then they must be hypocrites.

Your logic defies description.

I haven't studied up on the subject to have a thorough knowledge of Sony's content markets, but I do know that my daughter's Elmo DVDs were distributed by Sony. Hardly the smut you've accused them of producing.

I really can't quite get my head around your logic. It seems, though, that if we applied the same thinking (?) to America then every American is overweight, drives an SUV, and shops at Walmart. And every American company is guilty of insider trading, running offshore sweatshops, and shorts their employees' paychecks.

Remarkable. Just pure, undiluted ignorance. Unless you have some sort of substantiation for your accusations?

- Jon

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der passant said:

member since 06 Dec 2006 with 6 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:10 am

Microsoft and the Adult film industry are in the HD-DVD camp. Just call this betamax 2.

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:52 am

Blu-ray already had a lot stacked against it. And now with all of the PS3s sitting unsold on shelves and porn shying away from the format... well I'm becoming increasing glad I went with an HD-DVD player. I won't end up with any HD movies on obsolete discs. Hooray for me!

But honestly, did anyone actually think a Sony proprietary media solution was actually going to win?

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:53 am

VHS was a better format - that's why it won out. Betamax used more of the recording surface of the tape for audio but at the time most people played videos through their TVs (using the TV's speaker) so picture was more important. VHS was also marketed better and, if I remember correctly, it beat Betamax to market as well. Nowadays it is so cheap to buy a DVD player that plays CDs, MP3s, etc etc that I am sure that we are likely to see combo BluRay/HD drives when the dust settles. Anyway, why is this such an issue?

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Jan 12, 2007 10:13 am

VHS the better format?

I suspect a good portion of the TV industry would beg to differ. Beta had the better quality, VHS had the better marketing.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:20 pm

Didn't Beta also had a better tape transport mechanism (quicker RW / FF)?

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Mikuro said:

member since 15 Jun 2002 with 457 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:13 pm

That's...really stupid. Does Sony think the presence of porn on Blu-ray is going to hurt them by association? If that were the case, every other medium would have died out a long time ago...

Shyeesh. I was pulling for Blu-ray, so I'm sorry to hear this.

But with hybrid drives and even hybrid DISCS in development, I wonder if it'll really matter. It's possible both will survive, like DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W. For a while they competed, but now most drives support both and neither standard looks like it's going anywhere.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:47 am

Sony will screw this thing thing up just as they did with Beta. They can't dictate to the market what they feel is appropriate. This is why they're in trouble!

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:04 pm

History repeats itself.

Sony created Betamax and made it proprietary.

JVS created VHS and licensed it to other manufacturers.

Sony creates Blu-ray and makes it proprietary again.

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:29 pm

Sad day if the porn industry decides the standard. Blu-Ray is technically superior to HD-DVD.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:49 pm

Guest wrote:
Just today at the Digital Bits (an *-DVD website), the editor pointed out that HD had very little to offer at the CES.

While yes, pornos do signal technology revolutions, there's plenty of porno-innovations that never took off (the DVD condom, for instance, came out in 1999 and no one's having protecting digital versatile playback today, 7 years later).

Besides, this is America--imagine the publicity if Sony came out and said Toshiba was supporting pornographers, while they were doing their best to stop them. I'll be there'd be a lot more Blu-Ray exclusive companies...

Quote this post ↓

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