Digital Playground forced to use HD-DVD due to block on BluRay porn by Sony [Archive]

Jace

01-11-2007, 07:04 PM

http://www.sgknox.com/2007/01/11/no-porn-on-blu-ray/

Has Sony gone mad? Prominent adult movie producer Digital Playground (site) says it is forced to use HD DVD instead of Blu-ray, because Sony does not allow XXX-rated movies to be released on Blu-ray.

It does not matter how you stand to porn. It is here and it is a massive business. It is also an industry that is an early adopter for new media technology. VHS might not have won with out the adult film industry adopting it.

German Heise has interviewed Joone the founder of Digital Playgrounds at the AVN 2007 show in Las Vegas. Joone says actually said last year he is committed to Blu-ray. Now they announced four HD DVD titles in the United States. In the interview Joone says he was forced to use HD DVD, because no Blu-ray disc manufacturer would make his discs, because Sony was against it and they would loose their license.

If this holds true, Blu-ray is at a major disadvantage and could fail.

venturi

01-12-2007, 12:38 AM

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

There are two major problems with Sony's strategy that I see playing out here.
1. Market censorship.
2. Price point of the technology.

I don't know just how heavily the porn video industry played a part in Betamax's demise but I'm sure it had noticeable impact its inevitable death. Additionally, from what I'm seeing Sony appears to be pricing themselves out of the battle as well - again just like they did with betamax.

Some will argue that the porn industry won't have as much of an impact this time around because of the existence of broadband internet and the various video technologies that makes now feasible. I would have to disagree with this. In general, based on my experience, the brick-and-mortar porn video market is as strong now and possibly stronger than it was back in the '80s. If anything, porn on the Internet has created more DVD & VHS sales, especially for companies with stakes in both markets.

This little war is a bit reminiscent of the adolescent days of Microsoft vs. Apple as well. Microsoft nearly crushed Apple out of existence. Microsoft kept its price points relatively low and went out of its way to foster 3rd party companies to embrace their technology. With Apple you had to buy an Apple computer - you couldn't go pick up a copy of "Apple OS" at ComputerLand. They were more expensive, totally proprietary, and very few 3rd party companies even attempted to produce anything compatible with Apple tech. If not for "Lisa" and the birth of the Mac, coupled with their fairly aggressive school technology program(s), Apple would be but a distant memory.

As a side note: Could Sony's no porn on blue-ray stance have something to do with the Japanese sexual culture? Photographic and video imagery displaying the human genitals has historically been officially forbidden in Japan - even Playboy obscures it's pictorials in the Japanese edition. If this has changed in recent years I am not aware of it. However, live nude shows complete with sex acts, prostitution and mistresses though - well that's a whole 'nother ballgame. LOL

I'm by no means an expert on either HD-DVD or Blue-Ray. For my tastes and needs the whole Hi-Def tech is still too infantile to pique my interest enough to cough out several hundred bucks extra to get a better picture on about 20%, at the most, of the programming that interests me. But "tech wars" like this do entertain me a bit; it is interesting to see how the billion dollar strategies play out. If I were one to wager - even before this announcement about blue-ray - I would have put my money on HD-DVD merely because of the pricing. If this latest news is gospel I gotta call this little war all but over.