Movies 'the key' 
Backers of the rival formats have been reluctant to concede any ground in the battle to emerge on top in the HD video market.
The backers of Blu-ray hope Sony PS3 will boost its reach
Both formats offer greatly increased storage capacity, compared with traditional DVD players, to cope with the huge sizes of video encoded for new high definition TVs and displays.
But while HD-DVD discs can contain up to 30GB of data, backers of Blu-ray boast that their discs can store even larger files, of up to 50GB.
Analysts and manufacturers say that deals with film studios may hold the key to winning the emerging contest between the two formats.
While Toshiba showed off its new HD-DVD machines at IFA in Berlin, Hollywood giant Twentieth Century Fox gave Blu-ray a boost by announcing plans to release films for that format only.
"We have no plans to release on HD-DVD. Consumer-wise Blu-ray is the best proposition," said Mike Dunn, global president of home entertainment for the studio.
Time Warner also announced plans to release films on Blu-ray, Reuters reported.
Only three of the major studios have said they will release movies in HD-DVD formats.
Seven studios are releasing their movies on Blu-Ray. Two of those studios overlap. If you want to watch a Universal movie (King Kong, Apollo 13, Back to the Future, E.T.), that movie will only be available in High Def on HD DVD. Conversely, if you want to see a 20th Century Fox, Sony, Tristar, Columbia, MGM, UA, or Disney Movie (Star Wars, Alien, The Fifth Element, The Big Chill, Ghostbusters, James Bond franchise, Species, Rocky, Pink Floyd The Wall, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, The Last Waltz, Harry Potter franchise, Chronicles of Narnia franchise), you'll have to go with Blu-Ray. Warner/New Line and Paramount (The Matrix franchise, Batman franchise, Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Lord of the Rings franchise, Friday the 13th franchise, Mission: Impossible franchise, Jack Ryan franchise) are coming out on both formats.
But Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's digital consumer chief, raised doubts that most Hollywood films would require the greater storage capacity of Blu-ray discs.
"The question is: who needs this," he told Reuters, referring to Blu-ray's capacity.
He said the rival formats could continue to co-exist, but conceded that the major film studios could make or break either format.
Porn industry may decide battle between Blu-ray, HD-DVD 
Just as in the 1980s, when the Betamax and VHS video formats were battling it out for supremacy, the pornography industry will likely play a major role in determining which of the two blue-laser DVD formats -- Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD -- will be the winner in the battle to replace DVDs for high-definition content.
Ron Wagner, director of IT operations at E! Entertainment Television Inc. in Los Angeles, said his company has already chosen the Blu-ray Disc format, in large part because of talk in the porn industry favoring it over rival HD-DVD.
Wagner said that while attending last year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference in Las Vegas, more than one panel discussed “several major players in the porn industry going the Blu-ray route.” He said the rivalry between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was also the buzz around NAB 2006 last month.
“If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry’s support of VHS],” he said. “The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS.”
E! Entertainment is using Blu-Ray discs primarily for Sony Corp.’s XDCam applications for acquisition of television programming materials. The television network, which has more than 85 million subscribers to its celebrity gossip and entertainment news, said it is not considering optical formats for long-term data archiving but will stick with magnetic tape for now.
The pornography industry, which generates an estimated $57 billion in annual revenue worldwide, has always been a fast leader when it comes to the use of new technology, according to analysts.
Porn studio Digital Playground Inc., which claims to have produced the largest number of high-definition movies in the industry over the past three years, said it is choosing Blu-ray Disc for all of its “interactive” videos because of its greater capacity. It also selected Blue-ray because Sony chose the format for its PlayStation 3 (PS3) box, due out in November.
The co-founder of Chatsworth, Calif.-based Digital Playground, who goes by the one-word name “Joone,” said the fact that Sony chose Blu-ray guarantees his studio an instant home audience.
“PlayStation 3 is going to be the Trojan horse that will get a lot of numbers into the home theater systems -- the living rooms,” said Joone, who is also a movie director. “Technology-wise, we’ve chosen Blu-ray, which doesn’t mean we won’t support both formats ... but as far as having really cool technology and a lot of storage for future-proof, Blu-ray is a good format.”
Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD are the new optical-disc formats that are positioned as replacements for DVDs with high-definition content.
Blu-ray is not only backed by entertainment giant Sony, but Panasonic Corporation of North America, LG Electronics Inc., Philips Electronics NV and movie studios The Walt Disney Co. and Fox Filmed Entertainment. Blu-ray offers storage up to 50GB capacity, or up to nine hours of high-definition content. In contrast, HD-DVD has 30GB capacity and is supported by companies including Toshiba Corp., NEC Corp. and Warner Home Video Inc.
Paul O’Donovan, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said pornography’s support of either DVD format will be a “strong factor” to the uptake of the technology by the general marketplace, but even more critical is Sony’s adoption of the technology.
O’Donovan said even though the Blu-ray format will be more expensive initially and will come after that of HD-DVD, the sheer support it is receiving from the entertainment industry, including pornography studios, will catapult it to a victory within a range of 18 months to five years.
Steve Hirsch, head of the adult film studio Vivid Entertainment Group, said he’s currently using the HD-DVD format because it was the first to be available, but his studio will begin burning to the Blu-ray format as soon as it’s available.
“The adult industry has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. We don’t have any theatrical distribution issues, nor do we have 'big box' retailers, like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, to cater to. We’re forced to find distribution wherever we can,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch, who founded Vivid Entertainment in 1984, said the porn industry -- just as in the 1980s -- will have a big influence on the outcome of the latest high-definition video-format wars. In the 1980s, Hirsch said VHS tapes started selling for $50 a piece, and Betamax sold for $55. “Therefore, we pushed VHS harder, and in that sense, we did have something to do with VHS winning out,” said Hirsch, whose studio pulls in an estimated $100 million in revenue a year.
“It was the adult industry who jumped right in and were putting movies on both VHS and Beta. We pushed the actual technology more than anyone else,” he said. “The adult industry has always been ahead when comes to technology.”
But not everyone believes the format war will be determined by the porn industry. Steve Duplessie, founder of research firm Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., and a Computerworld columnist, said the porn industry’s influence over the fate of VHS and the upcoming high-definition DVD formats is overstated. Duplessie said VHS ultimately won over Betamax because Betamax was a proprietary format owned by Sony, while VHS was more open.
“I love the whole pornography concept simply because porn is still the No. 1 money-making use of the Internet," he said. "But I don’t believe the porn industry will drive the format. Like any other industry, it will supply what the consumer wants."
