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02 January 2007, 16:37
Porn industry may decide battle between Blu-ray, HD-DVD.
LG to End HD Format Wars
Just as in the 1980s, when the Betamax and VHS video formats were battling it out for supremacy, the pornography industry will likely play a major role in determining which of the two blue-laser DVD formats -- Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD -- will be the winner in the battle to replace DVDs for high-definition content.
Could the HD-DVD vs Blue-Ray wars end with a whimper instead of bang? It sounds like a distinct possibility now that Korean-based electronics manufacturer LG announced that it will unveil the world's first dual-format high definition disc player next week at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. That's right, Blu-ray and HD-DVD living in perfect harmony.
It unclear right now if LG has the blessings of Blu-ray camp (Sony and its partners) or the HD-DVD camps (Toshiba, Microsoft, et al), but the introduction of this drive could be good news for consumers and the movie industry, which has been scrambling to fill both format platforms with new content. Ron Wagner, director of IT operations at E! Entertainment Television Inc. in Los Angeles, said his company has already chosen the Blu-ray Disc format, in large part because of talk in the porn industry favoring it over rival HD-DVD.
Wagner said that while attending last year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference in Las Vegas, more than one panel discussed “several major players in the porn industry going the Blu-ray route.” He said the rivalry between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was also the buzz around NAB 2006 last month.
“If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry’s support of VHS],” he said. “The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS.”
E! Entertainment is using Blu-Ray discs primarily for Sony Corp.’s XDCam applications for acquisition of television programming materials. The television network, which has more than 85 million subscribers to its celebrity gossip and entertainment news, said it is not considering optical formats for long-term data archiving but will stick with magnetic tape for now.
Most industry watchers believe all format supporters got little more than coal this holiday season, and consumers generally ignored the new set-top players from Sony, Samsung, and Toshiba. There are laptops with the new players, (and some burners as well, but it's too soon to project sales penetration on those).
LG offered few details on its planned dual-format player launch at the CES Show, but its press release does make the company's goals clear: "LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers." The pornography industry, which generates an estimated $57 billion in annual revenue worldwide, has always been a fast leader when it comes to the use of new technology, according to analysts.
Porn studio Digital Playground Inc., which claims to have produced the largest number of high-definition movies in the industry over the past three years, said it is choosing Blu-ray Disc for all of its “interactive” videos because of its greater capacity. It also selected Blue-ray because Sony chose the format for its PlayStation 3 (PS3) box, due out in November.
The co-founder of Chatsworth, Calif.-based Digital Playground, who goes by the one-word name “Joone,” said the fact that Sony chose Blu-ray guarantees his studio an instant home audience.
“PlayStation 3 is going to be the Trojan horse that will get a lot of numbers into the home theater systems -- the living rooms,” said Joone, who is also a movie director. “Technology-wise, we’ve chosen Blu-ray, which doesn’t mean we won’t support both formats ... but as far as having really cool technology and a lot of storage for future-proof, Blu-ray is a good format.”
TOKYO - The group supporting the HD-DVD optical disc format for high-definition video has received a boost in its battle against the rival Blu-ray Disc format with pledges of support from a number of Hollywood studios.
The format will be used by Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, the HD-DVD group said on Monday. It will also be used by HBO, Warner Bros. announced the same day.
The studios didn't announce the names or number of titles to be released using the format, and there was no mention of timing, with the exception of a pledge from Universal to have content available during the end-of-year holiday season in 2005.
"We want them to start releasing as many titles as soon as they can," said Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Toshiba's digital media network company, a backer of the disk format. Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD are the new optical-disc formats that are positioned as replacements for DVDs with high-definition content.
Blu-ray is not only backed by entertainment giant Sony, but Panasonic Corporation of North America, LG Electronics Inc., Philips Electronics NV and movie studios The Walt Disney Co. and Fox Filmed Entertainment. Blu-ray offers storage up to 50GB capacity, or up to nine hours of high-definition content. In contrast, HD-DVD has 30GB capacity and is supported by companies including Toshiba Corp., NEC Corp. and Warner Home Video Inc.
Paul O’Donovan, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said pornography’s support of either DVD format will be a “strong factor” to the uptake of the technology by the general marketplace, but even more critical is Sony’s adoption of the technology.
O’Donovan said even though the Blu-ray format will be more expensive initially and will come after that of HD-DVD, the sheer support it is receiving from the entertainment industry, including pornography studios, will catapult it to a victory within a range of 18 months to five years.
Steve Hirsch, head of the adult film studio Vivid Entertainment Group, said he’s currently using the HD-DVD format because it was the first to be available, but his studio will begin burning to the Blu-ray format as soon as it’s available.
The support is a coup for the group because it is the first time that any Hollywood studio -- with the exception of Sony Pictures, which is owned by Blu-ray Disc-backer Sony Corp. -- have come down firmly on the side of one of the formats. In October, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. joined the Blu-ray Disc Association but stopped short of committing to release any content in that format.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc use blue lasers in their optical systems. The discs are the same size as CD or DVD discs but offer data storage capacities several times greater than that of DVD. The extra capacity provides enough room to hold high-definition versions of movies and other content.
HD-DVD is backed by Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. and is being developed under the umbrella of the DVD Forum, the group that developed the DVD format. Blu-ray Disc has more major backers: Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Philips Electronics NV, Pioneer Electronics Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., Sony, TDK Corp., Thomson Multimedia SA and Twentieth Century Fox. “The adult industry has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. We don’t have any theatrical distribution issues, nor do we have 'big box' retailers, like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, to cater to. We’re forced to find distribution wherever we can,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch, who founded Vivid Entertainment in 1984, said the porn industry -- just as in the 1980s -- will have a big influence on the outcome of the latest high-definition video-format wars. In the 1980s, Hirsch said VHS tapes started selling for $50 a piece, and Betamax sold for $55. “Therefore, we pushed VHS harder, and in that sense, we did have something to do with VHS winning out,” said Hirsch, whose studio pulls in an estimated $100 million in revenue a year.
“It was the adult industry who jumped right in and were putting movies on both VHS and Beta. We pushed the actual technology more than anyone else,” he said. “The adult industry has always been ahead when comes to technology.”
But not everyone believes the format war will be determined by the porn industry. Steve Duplessie, founder of research firm Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., and a Computerworld columnist, said the porn industry’s influence over the fate of VHS and the upcoming high-definition DVD formats is overstated. Duplessie said VHS ultimately won over Betamax because Betamax was a proprietary format owned by Sony, while VHS was more open.
“I love the whole pornography concept simply because porn is still the No. 1 money-making use of the Internet," he said. "But I don’t believe the porn industry will drive the format. Like any other industry, it will supply what the consumer wants."
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