The MiniDisc:
Digital Audio Tape:
are all examples of technology that never really took off... and you can't use any of these formats to store pictures of boobs and butts.. On the other hand, CDROM, DVD and Internet technologies have all been very successful... and are also all useful for looking at porn.
Of course you can legitimately argue that the three failed technologies I listed are strictly audio formats and the three successes are multimedia-capable. Then there is the iPod, which has been a huge shot in the arm for Apple without anyone seeing so much as a single nipple. This is all true, so perhaps I should refine my theory: If you want your new VIDEO technology to succeed, make sure it allows people to see boobies.
As an example, I present Sony's Betamax.
This was a video format that lost to VHS in the early days of the home video market. Beta had enjoyed an early lead in the home video market and also offered superior picture quality. However, there were more cheap VHS units available than Beta, and a VHS tape offered about twice the recording duration of Beta. As far as home recording went, there was no limitation to what TV shows a person could record on either format, but only VHS allowed the user to tape an entire football game, which was probably the main deciding factor. However, there were other factors that may have played a part in the demise of Beta, including the availability of adult movies on VHS tapes, with X-rated Beta tapes being more rare.
Today, just like in the early days of Beta, Sony's Blu-ray HD format appears to have the lead over HDDVD. Although both formats have identical picture quality, Blu-ray discs are higher capacity making them slightly superior. However, there are currently more inexpensive HDDVD players than Blu-ray players. Also, the adult film industry appears to be leaning toward HDDVD, partially because Sony is offering no Blu-ray support for them. While they are not totally banning porn on their format, they will not allow their disc production facilities to handle adult titles.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9008579
Some will probably applaud Sony for discouraging the porn industry from using the Blu-ray format citing their own moral beliefs, but I seriously doubt that any such decisions on the part of Sony were made for moral reasons. Rather, I'd speculate that they are simply trying to avoid negative attention from fringe activist groups and attorneys. Shunning porn may not have been the deciding factor in the death of Beta tapes, but it certainly didn't help the situation, and the same has to be true for Blu-ray discs.
HDDVD and Blu-ray are competing in the free market, and the winning format will be the one with the most money flowing around it, not the one with the strongest moral fiber. No one can deny that there is a lot of cash flowing through the porn industry. Most X-rated DVDs are made on tiny thread budgets and sell for almost twice the price of mainstream DVDs containing films with budgets in the millions. Porn movies are hugely profitable, and if HD porn movies end up being almost exclusively available on HDDVD it can only help that format.
Of course one cannot ignore the extreme differences in the home video market today vs. 30 years ago. It is possible that today's home video market is big enough to support two HD formats.
A sequel of sorts to the Beta vs. VHS battle was fought between two portable video camera tapes over the last 10 years. The Video-8 and VHS-C battle ended in a stalemate because neither format had a clear edge over the other and the camcorder market was able to support both. Given that the two format's spec sheets are nearly identical, this could very well be the case with Blu-ray and HDDVD. We are now a couple of years into this format war with no one able to gain a decisive lead, which could be an indication that both formats might survive. As with the Video-8 and VHS-C comparisons, the major pros and cons to both Blu-ray and HDDVD result in a draw.
While the biggest factor in the Beta/VHS war was recording duration, with Blu-ray vs. HDDVD, it will probably be studio support. All video tape formats allowed anyone to tape and view anything they wanted, and this is not the case with the HD disc formats. There are currently movie studios on both sides of the battle, which means that neither format allows you to watch all of the HD movies on the market. While more movie studios support Blu-ray than HDDVD, the company with the largest market share, Viacom (which includes Paramount, Dreamworks and MTV), is releasing their movies exclusively on HDDVD. Still, this seems to add up to 6 of one / a half dozen of the other, unless you factor in porn. If porn ends up being only available on HDDVD, then the swingers might hold the swing vote.
However, the exact amount of weight porn adds to the HD equation is difficult to determine. While buyers of X-rated VHS tapes had little choice if they wanted to see naked people in motion, today's heavy-breathers can get gigabytes of cheap porn videos instantly on their computers. They don't have to shell out their hard-earned cash to watch a high-def version of the horizontal hokey pokey, and many may not feel that porn on HDDVD is worth the price. Personally, I'm not so sure that HD porn is going to be all that great. I'd think it would be a bit of a buzz-kill to see a nice, sharp image of a porn star that also allows you to count her pimples. Not many adult film producers are going to spend the time or money needed to digitally edit all that stuff out, so HD porn might just be TOO real for my taste. On the other hand, fans of 2girls1cup might relish being able to see the pieces of corn.
Personally, I am rooting for Blu-ray to emerge victorious, and if more consumers choose it over HDDVD it's a given that the adult film industry will follow. However, we are still early enough in the game to where the film producers have more pull than the consumers. One cannot deny that the current situation with the porn industry is a plus for HDDVD. Just how much of a plus is hard to say.
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