Blu-ray or HD-DVD

Obviously with the two new formats on the market there will be a big dilemma between us early adopters (as myself) or impulsive buyers (as Mike) or risk averters (as Dan) to decide which format we should buy into. I offer an interesting piece of insight that I came across while looking up the price of Blu-ray burners.

Before I discuss the insight, I must mention that there are currently no HD-DVD burners right now, so that pretty much settles my issue of concern. Otherwise, the two formats offer more or less the same features and in favor of HD-DVD is that the players seem to be much less expensive now (up to half the price of Blu-ray players.)

It was pointed out however, that the pornography industry often dictates technology changes. To put it very simply, there is so much porn out there compared to regular movies (this will be a topic of later discussion - US porn video rentals are about 13 billion dollars yearly vs. about 9 billion for mainstream video) that they have quite an impact on which technology gets the most usage. Noteworthy also is that pornography is for the most part exclusively on home video in some format (unless you want to get caught rubbing one out at the Lusty Lady or something - as I am sure Chaz Lutz has - the Lusty Lady will also be a topic of future discussion.)

Pornography was largely responsible for the winning of VHS over Betamax in the early 80s. (Let's put it this way, I only knew one person (an unmentioned friend's dad) who had Betamax porn and it was a compilation of nasty sh1t that was probably copied from someone elses VHS tapes.) If you are interested in what was on this tape, let's just say that it was the closest thing that the early 1980s had to Bukkake - using several clips from different films. Pornography was also responsible for several of the most important internet technologies we take for granted (ie. online payment systems, streaming video, video rental delivery - such as Netflix - my old roommate had a pornflix time thing way before anyone had ever heard of Netflix.) Filesharing, insane bandwidth, etc. all was heavily influenced by porn.

So what's the point? Apparently, the porn industry has embraced HD-DVD. At one of the big porn industry conferences in Vegas earlier this month (AVN 2007), it appears that the overwealming concensus was that studios will be preferring HD-DVD because it is far cheaper and easier to produce these discs. (Straight from Bangbros mouth apparently is HD-DVD.) For all you sickos out there (Stabbone specifically), that might be enough to sway the decision right there. For me, I prefer Blu-ray because there are burners available (now at increasingly more reasonable prices.) If I need to, I will just burn the sh1t myself. Who buys/rents it anyways? And maybe I will just stick to low def smut. Who needs to see some nasty hairy ass at 1080p?