Adult Entertainment Goes HD-DVD

There's a fun article in today's New York Times business section about how the advent of HD-quality discs is changing the way adult film stars get ready for their closeups—everything from makeup and plastic surgery to post-production video tweaks. (It's got one of the best quotes of the week, from adult star Jesse Jane: "I'm having my breasts redone because of HD," which certainly tops Jessica Simpson's playfully provocative DirecTV HD endorsement on TV.) HD-quality discs are still few and far between, but apparently that's set to change in the next few months, at least if the amount of adult titles in HD-DVD on display at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas is any indication (according to the news, that is...I didn't have a chance to make it to this year's show, which runs simultaneously every year with CES).

Why is the adult entertainment industry going with HD-DVD? Well, it turns out that on Friday Sony announced its Blu-ray disc factories would not support any adult films. That doesn't mean that adult films can't end up on Blu-ray, but the process will be a lot more complicated. As a result, most major adult film producers are releasing their films in the HD-DVD format.

Now, whether you like or approve of adult movies (or not) is beside the point: Sony is shooting its Blu-ray format in the foot with this latest move. The success of the VHS format over Betamax—and of the videotape industry in general—is widely attributed to adult movies being available in VHS. Many of the online entertainment business models were fleshed out first by adult businesses (adult sites were using HD-quality videos and DRM way before iTunes, Vongo, or any of the mainstream video sites did). Even today, about 60 percent of peer-to-peer video downloading on the Internet consists of porn. (In other words, porn is so popular that the adult entertainment industry is getting ripped off on an even greater scale than the cry-baby movie studios). Say what you want about Sony upholding family values, but this is simply bad business for the company's fledgling format. Which is too bad, because I'm beginning to like Blu-ray (and the fine new players coming out, like the Panasonic DMP-BD10).

What I wonder is if anyone really cares whether Sony supports adult movies or not. Would you choose a high-definition format based on whether or not it handles adult movies? Or the better question might be, would you choose a family-friendly format, even though its very family-friendliness is what makes it go bust?