Porn Valley [www.money.cnn.com ]: The adult entertainment industry has been a driving force in the adoption of new technologies such as the VHS video cassette recorder and home Internet access.
But it’s having little influence in the high-definition video disc format war.
For starters, porn watchers don’t think the high-def discs are worth paying double the price of the DVD version, says Don Houston, a reviewer with XCritic.com.
Maybe X-rated movies weren’t meant to be seen in such unforgiving, ultrasharp video with all a performer’s flaws showing, he says.
“Porn is a fantasy and the added resolution sometimes detracts from that fantasy,” Houston said.
To date, very few adult titles have been released in either format. But most of them have been in HD DVD.
Blu-ray Disc replicators have been reluctant to produce adult content, either because of contracts with Walt Disney that prohibit them or because of pressure from Sony, leader of the Blu-ray camp. But new replicators are coming online that are open to making X-rated videos on Blu-ray Disc.
Even with the playing field leveled, however, it’s unlikely to sway porn watchers to choose a side because the mainstream studios are still split.
Unlike when adult content helped VHS beat out Betamax in the video cassette format war of the late ’70s and early ’80s, porn fans have a lot more ways to get smut, especially online and in today’s standard-definition digital video discs.
As of Friday, online retailer Adult DVD Empire offered only 19 X-rated HD DVD titles and three Blu-ray titles.
High-def adult movie titles retail for about $50, twice as much as the DVD price for the same title, Houston says.
“I don’t think (the adult video industry) is going to have much of an impact” on deciding the winner of the format war, Houston said.
Porn studio Digital Playground of Van Nuys, Calif., this month came out with its first Blu-ray Disc title, “Pirates.” It has put out its other high-def titles on HD DVD. Its first HD DVD title, “Island Fever 3,” shipped last January. By the end of December, Digital Playground expects to have 22 HD titles available.
Wholesale prices for high-def discs are about 30% more than standard DVD, says Digital Playground founder and adult film director Joone, who goes by the single name. By the time it gets into retail, the HD disc gets marked up to almost double the price of the DVD, Joone says.
In July, Vivid Entertainment Group of Los Angeles was the first adult studio to distribute a movie on both HD DVD and Blu-ray — “Debbie Does Dallas … Again.”
It’s much cheaper to put out titles in HD DVD than Blu-ray Disc, says Steven Hirsch, co-CEO of Vivid Entertainment.
But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of momentum for high-def discs overall, Hirsch says. Ultimately physical media will give way to high-def video on demand and downloads on the Internet, he says.
As more consumers get high-definition TVs, they’re going to want to see the best quality video available, Joone says. “Once people see it, they don’t want to go back to standard def,” he said.
That, he says, holds for adult content, too. “You feel like you’re there watching it live,” Joone said. “It’s more real. It brings the fan closer to the action.”