VHS/Beta war same as Blu-ray/HD DVD?

[bw1605]

ok this may have been beaten down already if so i am sorry. but wasnt sony the creator of beta, and since porn is said to be the deciding factor in that war, isnt it weird that there isnt going to be porn on blu-ray. it just seems sony wouldve learned from there mistakes. but we are killing the compition right now and i dont wanna see it die

[goodstuff]

There is porn on Blu-Ray, though they're selling like crap on both formats. Media-based porn is no longer the force it was back in the 80's when that was all you could get to view it at home. Now, it's all about the internet porn.


http://adult.dvdempire.com/exec/v2_c...sort=4&order=1

[haushausman]

Originally Posted by goodstuff

There is porn on Blu-Ray, though they're selling like crap on both formats. Media-based porn is no longer the force it was back in the 80's when that was all you could get to view it at home. Now, it's all about the internet porn.


http://adult.dvdempire.com/exec/v2_c...sort=4&order=1

Bingo. Porn's run around 40 bucks a pop. Or... download it for free.

The Beta vs. VHS comparison cannot be used... over two decades have gone by since and too much has changed.

Not to mention Sony kept the rights to their Beta technology and that was a huge factor in its downfall. Obviously the rights to using Blu-Ray have been released. I may be inaccurate with this, I was about 3 years old when Beta was around.

[aphex]

Originally Posted by bw1605

ok this may have been beaten down already if so i am sorry. but wasnt sony the creator of beta, and since porn is said to be the deciding factor in that war, isnt it weird that there isnt going to be porn on blu-ray. it just seems sony wouldve learned from there mistakes. but we are killing the compition right now and i dont wanna see it die

back then vhs or beta was necessary for porn. Nowadays it's all the internet(not literally all), but the market has defiately changed for it.

[Zyclone]

hey mate welcome to the forums , there is porn on blu ray already , sony just said they won't help them with specs or let them use their pressing plants etc to make it , but there is porn blu ray titles.

porn helped VHS won but that was before the internet , porn dvd sales would have dropped largely by now so , plus porn titles on blu ray or HD DVD are very costly.

enjoy your stay , stay down with the clown etc.

[BluStar88]

Originally Posted by bw1605

ok this may have been beaten down already if so i am sorry. but wasnt sony the creator of beta, and since porn is said to be the deciding factor in that war, isnt it weird that there isnt going to be porn on blu-ray. it just seems sony wouldve learned from there mistakes. but we are killing the compition right now and i dont wanna see it die

There is porn! there seems to be more in Japan but there are no region issues. For japanese porn and others (cause you know inocent me would never buy any porn) you can go to www.amazon.co.jp

[bw1605]

thats cool i didnt think about the internet porn playing a factor. well i am glad to hear this isnt in the same fashion as the 80's then

[Gio]

i feel its more like the dvd / divix war in which paramount also suppoted the losing format, as it was already said people get their porn mainly from the internet

[Moefiz]

I think that the war between the Sony and Toshiba is different form the VHS and Betamax war, back in then you didn't have the amount of information that you have now and I think that if you did it would have been a different outcome.Maybe porn decided that war but no way is it goin to have that kind of effect on this one....

[tron3]

Originally Posted by bw1605

ok this may have been beaten down already if so i am sorry. but wasnt sony the creator of beta, and since porn is said to be the deciding factor in that war, isnt it weird that there isnt going to be porn on blu-ray. it just seems sony wouldve learned from there mistakes. but we are killing the compition right now and i dont wanna see it die

Firstly, how do you guys know porn is available on BD without having looked for it?

It wasn't just porn that helped VHS win. Sure, it is still a big market as it was back them, but as everyone has been saying - that market has greatly shifted to the World Wide ******.

The BIG issue was only Sony produced Betamax. They would not license a single soul to make players - NO ONE. VHS only had 50 less lines of resolution, but everyone made the players. Sony arrogantly stood firm in "beta is better".

Well, VHS was cheaper and you had a choice of whose player you wanted. With Sony, you had one choice, and that was as good as no choice to some people. Sony simply got greedy, got stupid, and died alone like a Samari, sword in hand.

Don't think the studios liked the idea of paying money to Sony for every movie recorded on Beta.

Odd how Toshiba and Microsoft have joined forces to repeat history and make similar mistakes. History will repeat itself. Sony Pictures, Fox Studios, and Disney are going NO WHERE. Universal and Warner still sit on the fence with both legs dangling in our camp. Just a matter of time.

[Go Blu]

Well said.

Porn is a totally different animal today then it was back then.

VHS was a good vehicle because people could purchase and own it discretely in their own homes. Today we have the internet for that and mostly for free!

As far as not making the same mistake twice, Sony did a great thing this time. It got buy-in from all the members that make up the BDA association.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by Go Blu

...

As far as not making the same mistake twice, Sony did a great thing this time. It got buy-in from all the members that make up the BDA association.

Big retail companies have made great strides since the 80's in learning how to conduct business. However, "Corporate Head Syndrome" still rears its ugly little face from time to time.

Sony believed they would control the market! "We will produce all the players." "They will only play on our TV's." (At first, that was the case). "We will control the content.", "We will make money for every movie sold on Betamax." It was that assonine Pearl Harbor mentality all over again.

Still happens in business. Look how one CEO could have told Toshiba, guys... drop the gauntlet, we have no chance of winning. But his arrogance and threats to marketing and developers was supposed to make it all better. That CEO had no idea what he was up against. Blu-ray is bigger than Microsoft. Not in the litteral sense, in the sense once people know the difference, they decisively want blu-ray to win. Personal grudges against Microsoft doesn't hurt us!

Mac was better too, so why did the PC win? Same story as VHS. Multiple vendors eventually were allowed and MUCH cheaper, though they lacked the slickness, it did the job.

[SNAP]

The vhs/beta war wasnt studio-sensitive.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by SNAP

The vhs/beta war wasnt studio-sensitive.

I have to agree. As I recall, of the studios decided to support both formats. Hey, they were in it for the buck and still do so. They don't give a damn if your last working Betamax player just chewed up your tape. Buy a new one. Can't find it in Beta anymore? Oh well, we have it in VHS. Ultimately, they don't care if you ever watch the movie again - JUST BUY IT, and buy it again when a new rendition comes out.

[glenn22]

Porn winning the war for VHS wasn't as big a factor as people may think, in fact it is largely an urban myth. The REAL REASON that VHS won was due to it's greatly increased recording time over betamax.

People had no other way of recording their favorite TV shows and such until VHS/Betamax arrived. Don't you remember setting up that VCR and taping a show that you wanted to watch later? EVERYONE had that tape that they re-used a billion times to record a show every week. VHS allowed more recording time and made that easier for the masses. These days, there are PVRs and downloadable internet content which have basically replaced the VCR.

There have been a myriad of changes worldwide since the Betamax/VHS war, such as the Internet. Porn was not available in any other portable media at the time, you had to go to strip club or watch it at a scummy theatre... These days it's far more accessible.

If you were to look at this war objectively and compare it to the VHS/Betamax war, HD-DVD would be more representative of Betamax as it's space is smaller (30GB to Blu-ray's 50GB) than Blu-ray. Porn is a non-issue here and as been said, it's already available on Blu-ray anyways.

[navychop]

Originally Posted by tron3

Sony Pictures, Fox Studios, and Disney are going NO WHERE. Universal and Warner still sit on the fence with both legs dangling in our camp. Just a matter of time.

Disney is going NOWHERE? HA! Have you seen the sales of Disney titles this week? Or even before this week? Daddy wants high def, Disney is only available on Blu-ray, he gets family buy in for the Blu-ray format. Disney has a road show going to malls across the county, introducing people to Blu-ray, HDTV and all the wonder titles available that just happen to be from - DISNEY!

Warner, BTW, does not have both legs in the HD DVD camp. One in each, at best. They are selling about twice as many titles in Blu-ray as in HD DVD. They're not leaving Blu-ray anytime soon. Even Universal is watching sales begin to increase faster than was expected a few months ago. Paramount's deal ends not long after Xmas 2008. The admitted shortcomings of HD DVD in capacity and bandwidth are already affecting titles and limiting what directors want to do. And it's not just Transformers. Splitting a movie across two discs destroys continuity and is not popular. A second disc for extras is fine, but is added cost.

HD DVD has lost everywhere in the world already. There really isn't any hope at all that they will replace Blu-ray in this country, or anywhere. The most they could hope for is co-existence. And that is not likely- retailers, distributors, studios and consumers would all prefer the simplicity of a single format. Of course, they could end up destroying high def discs for a generation, like SACD/DVD-Audio.

HD DVD isn't meeting today's needs, much less any needs in the future. The cost advantage it had was phony, the features advantage it had is disappearing. It's lesser copy protection, and even lack of regional coding, works against it with some or all studios. It's capacity and bandwidth shortfalls are becoming commonly known. There are almost no manufacturers outside Toshiba, and almost no CE support. Seen any HD DVD recorders anywhere for sale? How about an HD DVD camcorder? What? Only in Blu-ray? I can buy a burner and blanks today for Blu-ray. It does matter for movies- it's called synergy.

Sorry if these aren't words you want to read, or even believe. But what you or I believe will not matter in determining "the winner(s)." Next year, maybe the year after, it will be decided. HD DVD will be a niche, or disappear entirely.

[GregBlu5]

Originally Posted by navychop

Disney is going NOWHERE? HA! Have you seen the sales of Disney titles this week? Or even before this week? Daddy wants high def, Disney is only available on Blu-ray, he gets family buy in for the Blu-ray format. Disney has a road show going to malls across the county, introducing people to Blu-ray, HDTV and all the wonder titles available that just happen to be from - DISNEY!

Warner, BTW, does not have both legs in the HD DVD camp. One in each, at best. They are selling about twice as many titles in Blu-ray as in HD DVD. They're not leaving Blu-ray anytime soon. Even Universal is watching sales begin to increase faster than was expected a few months ago. Paramount's deal ends not long after Xmas 2008. The admitted shortcomings of HD DVD in capacity and bandwidth are already affecting titles and limiting what directors want to do. And it's not just Transformers. Splitting a movie across two discs destroys continuity and is not popular. A second disc for extras is fine, but is added cost.

HD DVD has lost everywhere in the world already. There really isn't any hope at all that they will replace Blu-ray in this country, or anywhere. The most they could hope for is co-existence. And that is not likely- retailers, distributors, studios and consumers would all prefer the simplicity of a single format. Of course, they could end up destroying high def discs for a generation, like SACD/DVD-Audio.

HD DVD isn't meeting today's needs, much less any needs in the future. The cost advantage it had was phony, the features advantage it had is disappearing. It's lesser copy protection, and even lack of regional coding, works against it with some or all studios. It's capacity and bandwidth shortfalls are becoming commonly known. There are almost no manufacturers outside Toshiba, and almost no CE support. Seen any HD DVD recorders anywhere for sale? How about an HD DVD camcorder? What? Only in Blu-ray? I can buy a burner and blanks today for Blu-ray. It does matter for movies- it's called synergy.

Sorry if these aren't words you want to read, or even believe. But what you or I believe will not matter in determining "the winner(s)." Next year, maybe the year after, it will be decided. HD DVD will be a niche, or disappear entirely.

Having been (generally) on the losing end of format/technology wars over the years (8-track, cassettes, Betamax, VHS, VideoDisks, laserdisks, and, eventually, SD), I fully believe you're right on course here.

Obviously, though, someday Blu-ray will be replaced by something else perhaps we haven't even conceived of yet. But for now it's the best format. The quicker even SD gets replaced, the better it'll be, regarding the availability and prices of movies and TV series in Blu.

-Greg

[glenn22]

Originally Posted by GregBlu5

Having been (generally) on the losing end of format/technology wars over the years (8-track, cassettes, Betamax, VHS, VideoDisks, laserdisks, and, eventually, SD), I fully believe you're right on course here.

Obviously, though, someday Blu-ray will be replaced by something else perhaps we haven't even conceived of yet. But for now it's the best format. The quicker even SD gets replaced, the better it'll be, regarding the availability and prices of movies and TV series in Blu.

-Greg

It won't be replaced as quick as you think. HDTV is still in relative infancy and the BDA is already researching and developing larger and larger disc capacities. What does that mean? it means that when even higher resolution TVs become available, the format of choice for home video could very well still be Blu-ray disc.

[SNAP]

Glenn's right. In the 20 or so yrs. that laser was around only a million players were sold........and it still hung around that long. How many Blu & HD'S have been sold to date....counting X's and PS3's??

Originally Posted by glenn22

It won't be replaced as quick as you think. HDTV is still in relative infancy and the BDA is already researching and developing larger and larger disc capacities. What does that mean? it means that when even higher resolution TVs become available, the format of choice for home video could very well still be Blu-ray disc.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by glenn22

It won't be replaced as quick as you think. HDTV is still in relative infancy and the BDA is already researching and developing larger and larger disc capacities. What does that mean? it means that when even higher resolution TVs become available, the format of choice for home video could very well still be Blu-ray disc.

Took the words out of my mouth - basically. I think we all agree blu-ray is the here and now, and is "it" in the foreseeable future.

Now, taking a que from music. Gramaphone, LP, 8-track, cassette, CD, Ipod.
The future of movies could very well be on memory stick type devices. Cost being the prohibiting factor now. Plus, they need higher throughput speeds. Could be why they are working on USB 3.0 specifications.

I have said before that the future of blu-ray could be players that do both (BD100) disc and USB stick. How cool is that?