Sony says no to blue movies on Blu-ray, so will HD DVD win?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 20 January 2007 09:16

Your IT - Entertainment

Reports say Sony wants no blue movies on Blu-ray discs, giving HD DVD ‘a leg up’ on adult content in high def. But the Blu-Ray Disc Association says ‘there is no specific anti-porn’ mandate. What’s going on?

The legendary battle between Betamax and VHS tapes were said to be decided on two things – the first being the cheaper licensing costs for VHS technology from JVC, the second being that Sony didn’t want porn to be distributed on Betamax tapes.

We all know that VHS won in the consumer space, while Betamax was relegated to professional use only – where it is still in wide use today, especially in TV production circles, despite the consumer move towards hard disk drives and DVD discs to record video.

So while Betamax may well have lost in the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers, Sony has been making oodles of cash from the Betamax format. From this point of view, Betamax wasn’t such a loser after all – especially with the prices for professional equipment being so much more expensive that consumer equipment.

Now the same story seems to be playing out in the Blu-ray and HD DVD battle, with the final chapter still far off into the future. Sony is once again refusing to allow any of its factories to press Blu-ray discs that feature blue movies (adult content), but according to an article at PC Magazine, the vice chair of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), Marty Gordon, said that there is no specific anti-porn mandate regarding adult content on Blu-ray disc.

In a statement earlier this week, PC Mag quotes Gordon saying that: “There is not a prohibition against adult content. The BDA is an open organization that welcomes the participation of all companies interested in using and supporting the format, including those that represent the full spectrum of genres in the content industry.”

But beyond Sony’s opposition, the biggest reason for no adult content on Blu-ray disc is the massive cost of pressing a glass master, from which other Blu-ray discs are pressed. The cost is said to be US $25,000 – and if the glass master doesn’t burn properly, you’ve lost your money.

HD DVD pressing costs are said to be much cheaper, but even so, both formats present a problem – they take upwards of two weeks to ‘render’, and there still aren’t that many players out there for either format.

So the adult industry is in a quandary. Few people have the expensive players, high definition content makes wrinkles, rashes and other blemishes much clearer to see, the discs are expensive to buy, manufacturing costs are expensive, and Sony still opposes adult content despite the BDA saying they have no such opposition.

If even the adult industry can’t decide on a format, with many leaning towards HD DVD while wanting to offer content on Blu-ray too, what hope is there for the rest of the industry to come to a conclusion?

The ever present threat of simply downloading high-definition content direct to a hard drive is also muddying the waters, with PCs, the Xbox 360, the PS3 and even the latest Sony Bravia televisions able to download and/or stream both standard definition and high-definition content, bypassing the need for fragile optical discs.

It looks like no-one should get too excited just yet. The final chapter for high-definition content is still years away from being written, making the whole thing a bit of an anti-climax.