AttentionMax

Beth Fertig, reporting on NPR/WNYC’s January 19, 2007 episode of On The Media, examined the high-definition DVD format wars, and looked to the leading-edge porn industry for guidance on the outcome. It’s Sony’s Blu-Ray versus Toshiba’s HD-DVD, and Fertig was fixated on drawing parallels to the Sony Beta-versus-VHS video format war, which the porn industry influenced decades ago. But it was a comment from Shane Buettner of Ultimateavmag.com, which underscored just how misguided and over-hyped the DVD format war may be:

Porn did side with VHS, and that was the deciding factor in that format. I’m not sure that that is going to be the case now, and I personally don’t believe that we are ever going to see a physical media that is as ubiquitous as the DVD became. There are far too many other ways that people can get and consume this media.

I’ll give you an indicator. Vivid Entertainment, which is a very large content provider in the adult entertainment space, at this point in time, 40 percent of their business is on DVD discs, and that’s down from 80 percent five years before that. Most of their business seems to be shifting to cable and satellite TV, Internet and wireless applications.

So I’m not convinced that one or the other of this hi-def formats is going to be influenced that heavily by what the porn industry does or doesn’t do.

Those Vivid Entertainment stats are eye-popping. The porn industry may have less influence over which high-definition DVD format leads over the other. But could the porn industry’s withdrawal from physical media distribution prevent an overall spread of those formats, regardless of standard? That’s the key question that sticks with me.