Why Porn’s Already Decided the Next Generation Video Format

Elisha Cuthbert.

In recent weeks tech writers charged with sexing up their editorial have been suggesting that porn, not Sony, Time Warner and Universal, will decide the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray.

The pieces all use the VHS vs. Betamax struggle as a template for today’s showndown, explaining how Sony’s technically superior Betamax lost out to JVC’s VHS because you could only get porn on the latter format.

Unfortunately, this cute, convenient and well-worn tale is wrong.

VHS won the hearts of consumers because early Betamax machines could only record 60 minutes compared to VHS’s 120. That meant you could watch or record a movie on VHS without changing tape – something Sony forgot to consider and paid dearly for.

Specifically the standard Betamax tape was the L-500 (containing 500 metres of tape) and was good for 60 minutes of recording at Beta I speed. You could also get L-750’s, which allowed for 90 mins at Beta I speed, 3 hours at Beta II and 4.5 hours at Beta III.

VHS players recorded 120 minutes as standard and you didn’t have to pay extra for a longer, thinner tape and then be forced to record at the machine’s lowest quality to get to the magic 120 minute mark sufficient for most movies. That’s why, despite lower image quality, with blank media costing $10 – $15 a piece at retail, VHS was the smart choice for anyone trying to put movies on tape. Coupled to the comparatively high-price of Sony’s equipment, which still holds true today, and users had two good reasons to choose VHS.

All pornographers did was notice VHS’s practical superiority and put another nail in Betamax’s coffin by making porn available on VHS before Betamax. VHS wasn’t better because it had porn, VHS was better anyway and pornographers have a good eye for markets to exploit.

Now the history’s been corrected I’d like to point out it’s all irrelevant anyway. Porn chose its next-generation format back in 1996, a year before DVD hit the market, and it’s called the internet. It’s also why all those estimates on the size of the porn industry are wrong, overestimating video and underestimating the web (hasn’t anyone else read ‘The Long Tail‘?).

The only porn companies obsessing over the new HD formats are those who haven’t managed to make the internet profitable. When they do maintaining a huge stock-handling disk and tape shipping operation looks archaic, expensive and pointless by comparison. The editor of the New York Times said he doesn’t care if he’s printing a paper in five years time. Content providers who understand progress don’t care about formats, they care about content.

Porn studios can choose whichever format they like, consumers have already chosen internet porn over movies, and they’ll continue to chose media carriers based on convenience, cost and content availability. HD DVD and Blu-ray have lost to the web already, the tragic thing is they don’t seem to know it.

If anyone’s ready to bet printing and shipping disks can compete on cost with firing bits over a peer-2-peer network I’m ready to take their money. Sure there’ll be a market for the new discs but even now mainstream content providers are looking at YouTube and Joost and realizing the future’s not on the shelves of Wal-Mart.

Popularity: 29% [?]