Porn Industry to Have Big Influence.
Porn industry to have big influence on HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray
Posted by Dennis on 10 January 2005 - 09:44 - Source: News.com
GristyMcFisty lets us know about an interesting article over at News.com. It seems that the porn industry may have a big influence on the future of high definition DVDs. As most of you will know, two DVD formats are currently being promoted: Blu-ray (backed by companies such as Sony, Philips and Disney), offering a capacity of up to 50GB and HD-DVD (backed by companies such as NEC, Toshiba and Warner Home Video), offering a capacity of up to 30GB.
The porn industry releases over 11,000 DVD titles per year and thus they have a lot of power to influence the battle between two groups. But, currently the porn industry has no favorite. Smaller outfits seem to prefer HD-DVD for the lower cost, while larger outfits tend toward Blu-ray for the capacity:
The concept may seem odd, but history has proven the adult entertainment industry to be one of the key drivers of any new technology in home entertainment. Pornography customers have been some of the first to buy home video machines, DVD players and subscribe to high-speed Internet.
Pornographers weighed in on the coming battle last week at the industry’s Adult Entertainment Expo, which ran parallel with the largest U.S. technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, and had many of the same technologies–sometimes a generation ahead.
“We’re kind of riding it out a little further to see where the trend goes,” said Jackie Ramos, an executive in the DVD division at leading porn producer Wicked Pictures. But if he had to choose, Ramos said, “Blu-ray technology sounds pretty attractive.”
Paul Hesky, chief operating officer of Multimedia Pictures, one of the smaller groups, disagreed.
“Most of the DVD manufacturers in my business do not want the Blu-ray format because it requires new capital investment,” he said, adding, “I know for sure one format or the other will be out (on the market) by this time next year.”
Others say they want to see what consumers prefer.
Hollywood has begun lining up on both sides of the battle as they have watched the growth of DVDs slow. They will want a new standard in place soon, to accelerate again.
Many are watching the porn industry to see what happens.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/11186