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I'm a huge fan of the Blu-Ray format. I consistently go back to older Jules & Jenna Haze titles on Blu-Ray. It's frustrating that they stopped the production. I really thought this could have been a great way to release compilations of certain stars from a lot of companies. I suppose most consumers found it too expensive compared to watching HD on the computer being the obvious reason.
^ Probably it also has to do with the licensing costs for Blu-ray being much higher than for DVD. Almost none of the HC-DVDs I've seen have copy protection (which also costs licensing fees) on them, so you can guess they are trying to produce them as cheaply as possible. Heck, most don't even sport the DVD logo on the front and on the side (something also required for properly licensed DVDs), so there's again a few cents saved. With Blu-ray, copy protection is mandatory, so in addition to the Blu-ray licensing fees there are also the AACS licensing fees. And to my latest knowledge, there weren't that much Blu-ray manufacturers around, some of them could not cater to porn companies as otherwise they would lose their mainstream business (IIRC, Disney demanded from its replicator a strict no-porn policy, also to avoid the unlikely event some discs could get into their precious child-friendly stuff). The number of Blu-ray replication plants may have increased since that statement was made, but for porn on BD, I guess that ship has already sailed.
For me personally it failed because in mind there wasn't a strong enough reason to pay the extra money for them. The reason I started buying mainstream Blu-rays was because they offered more/exclusive content for the extra price. Now I buy them because even if they don't offer more content the price difference between Blu-Ray and DVD fairly small so I go with the Blu-ray. With most porn Blu-ray you seem to get the same amount (and in some cases less) for paying more. Plus...Most regular DVD porn looks pretty good. Yeah, the Blu-Ray looks better but not so much better it makes it worth the extra money in my opinion. In my mind it's only porn. That sounds like a putdown but really...With mainstream movies that clearer picture may mean I'm looking at a better picture of lavish backgrounds, finely shot scenes, and expertly set up color choices, etc., etc....With porn I'm often looking at a girl in a room in a house on a couch or bed. No strong need to pay more see that in extra sharp quality.
Porn on Blu-ray failed because of the financial crisis, plain and simple. It continues to fail in 2015 because the studios are cheap and shortsighted, focused more than ever on quick influxes of cash, at the expense of producing quality product. One of the things that stunned me about porn on Blu-ray is how the titles that did come out were often shorted extras like bonus sex scenes, or had everything crammed onto one BD-25, while the same title was presented on 2 DVD-9 discs. This was a big problem for parody titles, where the pointless non-sex version was encoded in 1080 resolution along with the extras and the main feature on one single-layered Blu-ray, while the same content was spread over two dual-layered discs in the DVD version. A great example of this is Upload, which was released on Blu-ray and DVD (I don't believe it made it to HD DVD). I never saw the DVD editions, but I assume each version of the film is presented on its own DVD-9 disc. Well, with the Upload Blu-ray, not only did you have to settle for the censored XXX version (as opposed to the "XXXX" director's cut), but all of the copious extras (which are mentioned on the cover of the Blu-ray) are gone, and the 4-hour XXX cut is still crammed onto one BD-25. And up until recently, the price you had to pay for that hobbled, gutted Blu-ray was something like $70.
^ Plain and simple? I don't think so. The financial crisis didn't cause Blu-ray's failure but it certainly didn't help. It's easy to accuse studios of being cheap and short sighted when you have a selfish interest in them producing Blu-ray. As others have pointed out, the higher licensing costs of Blu-ray put studios in a difficult position where they have to pass that cost on to the consumer and risk losing out financially if they produce loads of Blu-ray discs that don't sell when DVD, at a lower price point, is still considered good enough for a lot of people who buy physical media. You've also got those who go down the path of digital downloads via subscription or VOD due to them perceiving greater value for money than either Blu-ray or DVD.
It was certainly the single biggest contributing factor. Most studios began Blu-ray releases in 2008, and the decline was obvious by 2010. People seem to forget that 2008-2009 was essentially the debut for Blu-ray as a major player (and it is a major player) in home entertainment. Justifiably coinciding with the release of The Dark Knight on BD in December of 2008, the average consumer started to see value in Blu-ray and begin to switch over. But even as porn was being released on BD, it was extraordinarily difficult to find, and was rarely reviewed, so it's not difficult to see how most people who could have enjoyed Blu-ray porn did not really get the chance to. After 2010, most porn on Blu-ray came from Digital Playground, and that's great, but a lot of people (myself included) generally didn't care for the DP look and their constant overuse of contract stars. Otherwise we got the occasional parody feature, many of which tended to blend together after a while. Again, one can see how many people who could have enjoyed Blu-ray porn did not really get the chance to.As easy as it is to accuse, it's also just as easy to mount these pathetic defenses about costs. Blu-ray costs are not what they were back when the porn studios were actually releasing titles--in fact, my understanding is that they are significantly cheaper, which is borne out by the growth of small independent Blu-ray labels. If I'm incorrect, then I invite someone from a porn studio to show me their Blu-ray costs in 2008 versus a quote they receive from the same facility today. Look at all the other costs porn studios have. Look at Vivid supposedly paying six and seven-figure sums for the rights to "celebrity sex tapes". If they have hundreds of thousands to pay to Courtney Stodden or whomever to do masturbation scenes, then they have plenty of capital for a few Blu-ray releases every year. Look at Vinegar Syndrome, they're able to produce 4-5 XXX BDs a year for reasonable costs (they've already released two XXX BDs in 2015, which is two more than just about everbody else), and I'm sure that Brazzers and Vivid and Hustler all have a hell of a lot more money than they do. Again, NOBODY is asking for every title to come out on Blu-ray. But it hardly seems appropriate that these companies find money for everything else (recently including 4K equipment) and then release their product only on DVD or online. One Blu-ray release every 3-4 months from each of the remaining major porn studios would be most welcome, but we can't even get that much. Something is very wrong with that situation. And it's ludicrous to release content shot in 4K via super-compressed HD downloads or 480i DVD.
While I wish more stuff was on Bluray, I don't think the format would of had much more success, if every single title was available on the format. The market has changed drastically. In the late 90's and early 2000's I bought 2-3 adult dvds a month. If I wanted something like Asian Fucking Nation 1 I had to buy the dvd through an online store like adultdvdempire for $30 and then wait 3-5 days for it to show up in the mail. Now I can get the latest release in that series in a 5 minute download from my $10 a month Evil Angel subscription, along with access to another 20+ new titles each month, as well as years of back catalog. Even as a collector who prefers physical medium, the price differential is far too great for it to still be worth buying much stuff on disc. A small handful of titles like HardX's 'Maddy' I would happily pay $30 to own on blu-ray, but in total I would probably only be purchasing only 1 or 2 discs a year. At this point I would just like to see some stronger download options, like having the option to download the entire movie in one file, rather than having to download each scene separately (New Sensations now offers this on their newer stuff). It would also be nice to have chapter stops encoded into the download files.
Only time I would buy a girl flowers is if she was in the hospital 455 Posts 1/04
Posted - May 16 2015 : 4:55PM
Yes not to mention Blu-ray has always been a pain for the user to run due to the DRM keys being updated all the time so you have to update the software to play them all the time or they stop working. But yeah as pointed out probably main reason is same reason mainstream Blu-ray never took off i.e. most people aren't going to notice or care about the better image quality to pay the extra costs and deal with the extra hassles that come with it. The one's like me that do care especially now that I use a 4K monitor and it's way more noticeable now have moved on to sites like Evil Angel or other sites that offer 4k porn that provide almost the same thing without all the hassles that come with Blu-ray i.e. need special drive/special software to view, etc.. That leaves all the people stuck out in the boonies without decent internet to download 4k porn as the only one's that might still be interested in physical media like Blu-ray or DVD.
Who are people who forget the debut of Blu-ray? Me? I worked in the manufacturing industry where physical media formats were an important part of the business so I was all too aware of the format war and Blu-ray establishing itself. Who is the average consumer who saw the value in Blu-ray? What is the research you've conducted or read to qualify you to speak for the "average consumer"? I'm not an especially remarkable consumer and I don't think I defy the norm. I haven't seen the value in Blu-ray compared to digital downloads. Is the "average consumer" as you put it just you or some arbitrary stat you pulled out of your ass to give credence to your arguments?Where did I mount a defence? I simply stated that costs are a factor and I didn't say Blu-ray's licensing costs hadn't come down. I can see that when I buy mainstream films on Blu-ray at a considerably lower price than I paid 5 years ago though they are still more expensive than the equivalent DVD. As you seem to be so fond of observing with your pompous self-proclaimed ability to read the market, stating something and defending something are not one and the same.
I think Blu Ray is something Directors should still look at. Jules Jordan for example, I subscribe to the site but if he released his major titles in Blu Ray I would actually buy the Blu Ra in addition to the website content. So I think someone like that should consider to release their major releases on Blu Ray format. The Blu Ray promotion would actually make the titles feel "must see" or "ppv quality"
As others have stated it is the cost of replicating Blu-Rays that is the issue and finding a replicator that will take adult. A new version of Blu-Ray is being released by the end of this year called Ultra HD Blu-Ray. It will allow 4k (though technically it would UHD not true 4k), HDR and higher frame rates: http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/12/ultra-hd-blu-ray/ However it will require a new player and a TV that is UHD/4k that supports the HDMI 2.0a standard. I presume it would be even more costly to replicate then the current Blu-Ray standard.
Only time I would buy a girl flowers is if she was in the hospital 455 Posts 1/04
Posted - May 16 2015 : 11:21PM
Yup and there's the whole issue of UltraHD vs true 4K. I first noticed this when playing back some 4k porn from NaughtyAmerica. The video's were actually true 4k size so they wouldn't fit on my 4k computer monitor, most PC monitor's are currently UltraHD i.e.384 hex 2180 and not true 4k. 5k monitors are starting to come out though now since Apple released their 5K iMac.
Exactly. And hopefully, as a result, Blu-ray costs will fall further. Again, to take much of this thread as an example, there seems to be this immovable stance on downloading and streaming as the sole option for adult viewing, and for people like me, that, unfortunately, isn't how I will pay for content (either adult or mainstream). Just like physical media, downloading and streaming has its fair share of drawbacks, but these are always glossed over, and it's a shame. Speaking for myself, I did the whole downloading/streaming thing for a while, and I just got tired of constantly upgrading storage (both external, and internal) that would eventually fill up, and in rare cases, fail. I also got tired of keeping track of the various billing cycles, and the wildly inconsistent quality downloads offered between different sites. Mostly, however, I just felt like I was throwing money away. And I may have the same things to say about my Blu-ray (and DVD) collection sometimes, but at least I have physical copies that exist, and can be re-sold or traded for money if desired. At the end of the day, that's the difference for me, and the one that keeps me on the physical media bandwagon, even with adult material. My physical collection has value, and it will always have some value, even if that becomes only the materials the discs and packaging are made from, but my digital collection is worth nothing at all.
^Are these the same people who are responsible for record-breaking profits in the pornographic industry in 2014? I don't think so. If the current state of pornographic media was as successful as the heyday of DVD, then in theory, DVDs should be dispensed with, and pornographic companies should simply price their digital content to maximize their profits. Yet, on every site I visit, there always seems to be some way to join for less than the advertised price, and that's because, in the end, the value of digital adult content is, precisely, nothing. Downloading and streaming definitely has a place in porn, but by no means should it be the sole option for something better than DVD-quality.
^ I think he's trying to insinuate that porn profits must be down because people don't have enough Bluray porn to choose from. Or something. The usual tunnel vision mr_sphinx always exhibites any time there's a Bluray-themed thread around here.
Only time I would buy a girl flowers is if she was in the hospital 455 Posts 1/04
Posted - May 21 2015 : 5:13AM
As this article mentions just because it's 4k doesn't mean it looks better depending on how it was encoded and the bit quality, etc.. similar the the arguments I've seen with differing 1080 HD video quality depending on website you subscribe to. "In other words, streaming 4K might look worse than current 1080p Blu-ray, depending on how much compression is used. With Netflix now streaming "House of Cards" in UltraHD at 15.6 Mbps, initial indications speak of 1080p Blu-ray looking "cleaner," confirming some expert predictions. The likely reason? 1080p Blu-ray has a lot more bandwidth to devote to video than online streaming, more than compensating for the discs' older compression scheme." http://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-hevc-high-efficiency-video-coding-h-265-and-4k-compression-explained/
Blu-ray has been declining in more than just the adult arena. There are more and more smaller mainstream releases that still come out with no Blu-ray release. I suspect that for the smaller releases, it isn't financially viable to do multiple releases and pay for the multiple masters, especially since not all homes have a Blu-ray player in them.
You can get a one year subscription to almost any porn site for around $100 that has unlimited hi def downloads. $100 will only get you around 3 titles on physical blu ray discs. It makes total sense why blu ray isn't selling. It's the cost factor and the difference in price and convenience between physical discs and downloads is huge.
I'm just happy with my few Elegant Angel blu-rays I have. Outside if that, even on the fetish sites I frequent, they just put everything in 1080p downloadable anyway, so I just burn my own if needed. Hi speed internet has kinda made blu ray defunct when it comes to porn really in my opinion. ----Dread's Twitter----
Sorry guys, needed a break. Jacco - I was being facetious, but not in the way shalalin thought. My thinking is that the adult industry is in the position it is precisely because it over-relies on the internet for making money. Again, downloading and streaming are important. but they should not be the only solutions for HD porn. daviangel - The article you linked to is another example of why physical media is important--much is made of the resolution of streaming, but streaming is always outclassed by its optical disc counterpart, and I think it's telling that a well-authored 1080p resolution Blu-ray could be seen as superior to the hyper-compressed 4K downloads and streaming that porn will serve up. Flash - As for Blu-ray declining, there is a lot of data that seems to support that, yes. But at the same time, I think we have seen a huge increase in genre Blu-rays from smaller companies around the world, like Arrow (who are expanding into the USA from the UK), Vinegar Syndrome, Severin, Gorgon Video (VCI), 88 Films, Warner Archive, etc. And most of these labels cater to an audience that would buy adult titles on Blu-ray as well. I gave up on reading polls and internet articles about the "death" of the Blu-ray format a long time ago.
And this post I wanted to quote:This is all well and good...for you. However, if I wanted to sign up and download, say, all of Naughty America's 4K scenes, which have been done for about a year, I can pretty much guarantee you that I would need over 1 TB of free space for the whole collection, given that each Naughty America 4K download is usually 4+ GB in size. And that's just for the one site. You may find it convenient, but I wonder if your aim is to keep what you download--after all, you did pay for it by joining the site. As more and more sites jump on the 4K bandwagon and provide 4K downloads, you're going to be needing a lot of virtual space, unless you're okay with deleting your downloads when things get too full. As to why Blu-ray isn't selling, well, it's very difficult to sell a product that isn't there in the first place. Relying on titles that, for some labels, date back to 2006 or even older, which aren't advertised or reviewed, and that many Blu-ray adopters own already, is not going to give you an accurate picture of how a 2015 title would sell on Blu-ray in 2015. Again, all I am pointing out is that there are consumers of porn out there that the industry has (willfully, I think) ignored for the past several years. It's funny that Kevin Moore posted here, actually, because I remembered something I say a while ago. Kevin may or may not be aware, but Evil Angel licenses some of their work for Japan, and so they (or some other company in the USA) actually produce pixelated DVDs of Titty Creampies to be sold in Japan. See below: Titty Creampies 4 Japanese Edition The same label also puts out Jules Jordan, Elegant Angel, and others. It's almost unbelievable to me that there is a market in Japan to buy censored Japan version DVDs and VODs of US content they could easily view uncensored online without issue, and yet, it exists.
So where's the difference between that and what I wrote? Here you're outright saying that you think the porn industry's profits would be better if only they put more of a focus on physical media instead of the internet, that's exactly what I was insinuating in my previous post. It's the same claim you've made for years, and meanwhile DVD has become less and less important and Bluray has never got out of the starting blocks. And that you even seem to believe your argument is more sophisticated than it actually is, that's the cherry on top. IMHO, you're no different from all the niche fans around here (whether it's DAP, footjobs, or whatever) who vastly overestimate the importance of their personal kink to the overall porn landscape, it's just that your kink is based on a particular distribution model rather than specific content. It's really not that difficult - the great majority of customers today consider porn on physical media to be vastly overpriced. The great majority of customers today also consider regular-priced digital subscriptions (often in the $25-40/month range) to be vastly overpriced, that's why those are being discounted all the time. However, that doesn't mean shifting back to even more expensive physical media is the correct answer to the internet discount wars currently going on. People have already voted with their feet on that idea.Do tell, what would be the financial and physical space requirements for a set of commercially-authored Bluray releases holding the same scenes, compared to a 2 TB external hard drive? Edited by - shalalin on 5/23/2015 2:13:10 PM
In the end, the problem that porn on physical media has is that it's increasingly limited to five customer bases: - people who only buy porn very occasionally, either due to low finances or low interest - people who are too old or dumb to operate a computer - people who live outside the coverage area of any high-speed internet - people with highly diverse tastes and low patience who have to have certain new releases right away, and who would thus have to pay for multiple full-price web subscriptions all the time [where people with more patience would simply wait for discounted offers to roll around from time to time] - enthusiasts for porn on physical media The first group doesn't contribute much to the market by definition, groups two and three are shrinking all the time, and the fourth group is "threatened" by the consolidation of the market (more and more porn being available under a single subscription fee, e.g. Brazzers' Porn Portal, or Evil Angel's website) and by the rise of the VOD market. That just leaves group 5, which is why porn on physical media is going the same way as music on vinyl. Edit: Ah, I forgot one other group of people - those who are paranoid about paying for things via the internet. Edited by - shalalin on 5/23/2015 2:33:38 PM
count me in for group 5 and it annoys me if there are faulty dvd releases with no fixing in sight. Currently, on my extensive library, the following DVDs (not BDs) have playback errors that are mastering errors and do not go away with different copies of the same title: - Anal Fanatic 2 (Elegant Angel) - Oil Overload 7 (JJV) - Big Anal Asses 2 (HardX) From the Discs I could get my hands on, the following also have playback errors (same as above): - Club Elite 2 (Elegant Angel) - Cum Filled Chocolate Holes 1 (Platinum X) - Inside Her Ass (Evil Angel) Problem is: while with mainstream movies, the number of DVDs issued is much higher, with HC DVDs there will seldom be a 2nd issue which could/would correct such mistakes. And probably producers don't care enough for it, as they can always point to the VOD option (which doesn't really help the collector)... :(
Only time I would buy a girl flowers is if she was in the hospital 455 Posts 1/04
Posted - May 23 2015 : 3:16PM
Actually you are forgetting with #3 that even if they do have high-speed internet a lot of ISP's still have monthly caps for how much they can download per month. I'm guessing in the future we'll be seeing more pay websites bring back daily caps for how many video's you can download per day. There a still some that do this though it seems to be small at the moment but with Google fiber and other high speed ISP's becoming widespread it's very easy to download most if not all the video's you want just by signing up for a month or so. Or they will come up with something like I"m seeing on some websites like LegalPorno or 21sextury where you pay or buy so many tokens per month and thus are limited in how much you download per month without using caps. Also, they can just force users to buy physical media since that's the only distribution method they use i.e. ArchAngel which I never heard of? Edited by - daviangel on 5/23/2015 3:19:40 PM
I'll respond to more of your post later, but for now, if we're talking matching a 2 TB drive of 4K scenes, then that translates to about 40 BD-50 discs, or 80 BD-25s, which, if space is a concern, are easily stored in a disc binder, with room to spare. If we're talking UHD Blu-rays (since this is, after all, 4K content) then I believe the layers will be 33 GB each, so that becomes 31-62 discs. The crucial difference is that I can virtually guarantee that most or all of the discs in the binder will be playable in ten years, whereas you'd be very, very lucky to have your external hard drive working after ten years.
Only time I would buy a girl flowers is if she was in the hospital 455 Posts 1/04
Posted - May 23 2015 : 4:02PM
YUP! I have very little porn if any on my hard drive's from over 10 years ago since NAS boxes, cloud, etc didn't exist back then and hard drives were no where as cheap as they are now so most of it either got accidently erased or lost one of the several times I accidently dropped my external drives I stored them on :( I still have 100% of the DVD's from 10 years ago though :)
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hoochimama Deactivated User
1438 Posts 5/10
Posted - May 23 2015 : 5:38PM
IMO so far bluray is more important for softcore erotica than hardcore porn: The extra detail/better image quality you get from a quality 1080p source on a typical porn movie isn't going to show you anything that you couldn't already see before. The pussy, ass, tits etc were already visible and well detailed on decent 480p/720p sources when they're zoomed in on it. Maybe you'll get so see more skin blemishes or herpes sores, but the upgrade in image quality doesn't necessarily bring anything new to the hardcore porn table in qualitative terms, it's just an incremental boost in image quality, which is nice, but not a game changer. On the other hand when you're looking at say softcore sex scenes in "mainstream" movies or a playboy playmate pictorial video where the picture isn't zoomed in on a girl's privates, the difference between 1080p and 480p is that now you might be able to see labia or buttholes that before you couldn't really tell due to the low resolution/light/distance, these are things the directors may not have thought you'd be able to see when the footage was first distributed, this makes a bluray/1080p version of such scenes very worthwhile. A shot of a girl's ass in a thong might now let you see details of her anus even though it was a non-nude thing. A late night b-movie cowgirl scene where all you could previously see was some bush now lets you see the girl's vulva clearly rubbing against a limp dick etc etc.You want the video source to be equal to (no scaling) or greater than your screen's native resolution(downscaling) so that you're not losing out any details nor getting the blurry picture you get from stretching out a picture to fit on a larger frame(upscaling). With a 5k screen such as the iMac's, 4k content will have to be upscaled to fit the screen and you will get a blurrier picture. Porn producers should really make sure that their 4k content is really 3840 x 2160 aka UHD aka UHD 4k and not the DCI 4k standard of 4096 x 2160 (that isn't even 16:9 aspect ratio) since pretty much all 4k screens being sold are UHD 4k (3840 x 2160), that way there would be no need to downscale the source video nor would there be any aspect ratio issues when playing it on a UHD 4k screen. Besides, with a UHD 4k screen you should be able to upscale a 1080p picture with no detail loss since UHD 4k has precisely double the vertical and double the horizontal resolution of 1080p, which means all your 1080p bluray movies and 1080p games won't lose quality when upscaled to fit a UHD 4K screen(every pixel from a 192 hex 1080 picture will fit precisely 4 pixels(a square) in a 3840 x 2160 frame). ________________________________________________ Please ID these girls from PlayboyTV's Foursome show Edited by - hoochimama on 5/23/2015 6:23:31 PM
I suspect at some point in the not-so-far future you'll be unpleasantly surprised about the degradation levels of your DVDs. In fact, I suspect some of them are "working" even now only because of data correction algorithms dealing with data that has already been corrupted through degradation. Anyone putting trust into those industry estimates of optical media durability (anywhere from 30 to 100 years when DVDs were introduced, IIRC) is playing with fire. In any case, data on HDDs is easily copied to a new and invariably cheaper generation of models. (Yes, users too ignorant to do that will suffer, as ignorant users of anything will usually do.) Then there's the issue of copy protection on commercial optical media...sure, possible to work around in most cases, but how many physical media enthusiasts will have acquired the knowledge to do it when (not if) it becomes necessary to duplicate their contents? And cost considerations from 10+ years ago are irrelevant to the future - cost per gigabyte has dropped a lot more on HDDs than optical media, and I'd be surprised if that changes. Last not least, this whole "but will I still have it available in 20 years?!" track is a red herring in the first place - for the overwhelming majority of porn consumers, porn is something fairly disposable, and I daresay that's part of why internet porn has thrived compared to porn on physical media. I hate to repeat myself, but focusing on the durability of porn media is exactly the type of misguided "my niche interest is much more important than it actually is" thinking I was pointing out earlier. We here who are talking about this issue simply don't matter a whole lot to the overall market, and that's not going to change. Porn on DVD thrived when that was the only major game in town, just like VHS before it, and that's it. But for many customers, internet porn scratches an itch that was there all along and that it just wasn't possible to do anything about before advancements in technology finally made it possible over the last 5-10 years. And because of that, Bluray faces competition that the VHS and DVD formats just didn't have to put up with in their heydays. Edited by - shalalin on 5/23/2015 7:54:40 PM
shalalin - Since you have made multiple posts, I will try to respond to them all here. You spoke of me a "niche fan", and while I don't necessarily agree that a format is a niche, porn in particular has been living off catering to niche fans for decades. Everything in porn is niche, it's just that some niches are smaller and less profitable than others. While you may say that Blu-ray porn is too insignificant to cater to at all, I would say that the vast majority of that evidence is dated and unclear at best. For example, as much as I love Blu-ray porn, I only have maybe 20-30 titles from Digital Playground, which is maybe 1/6 of my overall collection. This is because, especially in recent years, Digital Playground content became very similar, with the same contract girls and the same guys. So for a long time, there I was as a Blu-ray fan and porn fan, not buying 98% of Blu-ray porn, because it was from Digital Playground. Of course, I went mad trying to find whatever I could in their titles that made them worth buying, in order to support their releases, but the whole situation was incredibly disheartening--to see really only one company releasing Blu-rays, but so much of that company's content is too similar. And we know, too, that consumers want HD content, otherwise we would not have HD downloads and more and more companies graduating to 4K resolution. As for your other post, where I'm in that fifth group, I'm afraid your analogy works against you. Vinyl in music (which, as it happens, is not something I collect) is actually growing exponentially, and as I understand it, for the first time in decades, new pressing plants are being opened, because demand is so high. If porn on physical media were going the way of vinyl (which would be analogous here to Blu-ray) then we would see massive inroads into Blu-ray porn production. Sadly, we're not there yet, but thank you for your optimism. Finally, to your most recent and, it seems, angriest post, you have made quite an inference there regarding physical media. Unfortunately, there is much to suggest otherwise. I have DVDs in my collection which are nearing twenty years old now, and I have porn DVDs from around the turn of the 21st century. These discs work flawlessly. If we're talking physical media in general, then I know people who have working laserdiscs from almost forty years ago, including adult titles (yes, porn was released on LD). And then of course there are the vintage enthusiasts who trade used adult titles on film stock (usually 8mm) on eBay and elsewhere, some of which is nearing half a century old. In a general sense physical media has stood the test of time, whereas digital media has shown itself to be just as vulnerable, but in a timespan that can be measured in months or years at best. And you mention upgrading digital storage, which if you have a serious collection, is something that must be done on a regular basis, and could incur heavy costs, like upgrading a computer system. Again, no one is denying that downloading and streaming are very popular, and that they are very convenient, but to act as if that is all there is, while at the same time, sites are shooting scenes at 4K, seems borderline ludicrous. I would happily accept arguments of Blu-ray authoring costs and the like, if I didn't strongly suspect that they were based on ignorance and/or outdated research. As much as physical media as a whole may be shrinking from dominance, I can't remember a time when I have seen more small labels able to release titles on Blu-ray, and again, I don't think it's beyond reasonable to ask for a few (2-4) Blu-ray releases a year from the major adult companies.
This is all well and good...for you. However, if I wanted to sign up and download, say, all of Naughty America's 4K scenes, which have been done for about a year, I can pretty much guarantee you that I would need over 1 TB of free space for the whole collection, given that each Naughty America 4K download is usually 4+ GB in size. And that's just for the one site. You may find it convenient, but I wonder if your aim is to keep what you download--after all, you did pay for it by joining the site. As more and more sites jump on the 4K bandwagon and provide 4K downloads, you're going to be needing a lot of virtual space, unless you're okay with deleting your downloads when things get too full.
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You can get a 1 TB external hard drive for about $75, 2 TB for about $120. You can fit hundreds of 1080 or 4K scenes on either one. You're still looking at hundreds if not thousands of dollars of savings by downloading. I also have yet to see one 4K disc for porn emerge anywhere. Maybe I'm mistaken but I don't know of anyone releasing true 4K on disc for porn, just downloads. In the end buying the physical bluray disc costs you way more in the long run than getting memberships and downloading into a hard drive.
As far as the lifespan of disc media. It's been my experience that stuff either goes bad within 2-3 years or it doesn't go bad. I have laserdiscs from the early 80's that are still fine today. In most cases the titles that go bad, are the result of the layers not being pressed properly and they end up getting "disc rot".
The argument about Blu Rays and Physical Media costing more in the long run is true in a certain aspect. The problem I see with collecting hundreds of HD and 4K scenes is the amount of time they take to download. If they took the same amount of time as standard definition scenes then that would be fine. My speed to download HD has gotten significantly faster over the years which is now on average of about 20-25 minutes a scenes. You have to think 4K scenes would have to take up to about an hour to download. Another ex-factor about the streaming would have to do with the quality of your computer. I would think if your computer isn't fresh out of the box then streaming the 4K content would be an absolute nightmare in terms of the constant interruptions and pauses. I think it's unreasonable to expect a Blu-Ray from every title to be available but for special occasions I see no reason why the format is not fully taken advantage of. There's certain stars I would actually shell out the extra cash for to have their scenes on Blu-Ray.
^ Come again? How does Blu-ray waste memory and how does physical media take up too much computer space? Granted, you might need some software to play Blu-ray but is that really such a ball breaker?
Don't know if there's any truth to it but I've recently come across some posts on other sites saying that the Blu-ray patent will expire sometime this decade (maybe 2026)
It's often said that streaming is the future but Blu-ray quality is objectively better. People who say streaming is the future often tend to ignore that good internet is required (many customers have average or below average service) and then you have companies like MindGeek who will starve their videos with the lowest bitrates possible which is a poor example that streaming quality doesn't match up...
If the Blu-ray patent does expire it would mean royalty fees would no longer have to be paid. For more frugal companies I think that's a pretty big deal. Maybe nothing will happen but it would be interesting to see a resurgence for the Blu-ray disc format from the adult industry.
Opportunity for many studios to release tons of content from their vaults to physical media collectors.
There is profit to be made even in a limited print run (e.g. 1500 or 2000 units) which would make the Blu-ray copy that much more valuable for collectors and fans of certain performers.
Sadly I think the blu ray market is gone. Best bitrates online for 1080p at best is 12000 and 4k 50000. Many studios though online release half that quality due to cost saving.
With DVD discs going back bitrates were around 8000 for 480p content but the studios generally now doing 6000 for 1080p content and 20000 for watered down 4k online.
The problem is do the studios still keep the masters or not. If not blu ray won't happen again as generally 40000 bitrate is the normal for the discs.
The customers who complain will be fobbed off with improved codecs/encoders argument etc but the fact is many studios were releasing higher picture quality content in 1080p in 2011-2012 then now in 2022.
Considering 5000 or so copies sold was typically considered a successful release back when DVD porn was actually a thing, I'd hardly expect "limited" runs of 1500 to 2000 Blu-rays of vault content to be happening even in a best-case scenario, regardless of any royalty requirements. Try 150 to 200, if anything.
HD downloads, same specs, cheaper price - everybody likes cheap.
Edited by - snufish on 5/10/2022 5:04:00 PM
for you "download" guys, you're actually getting low quality videos but since most of you only look at the resolution, pay sites have been able to get away with it. A few of the amateurs have been able to offer 10-20Mbps HD video. Many of the well known name brands have been offering less than broadcast quality bitrates (less than 8000Kbps). Then to add sites with download restrictions for the same $30 a month. Subscribers have been getting the shaft. For Blu-ray and broadcast, they're standards that must be adhered to give the customer best quality but for porn downloads, no standards exist, I once purchased a 1080p VOD and the bit-rate averaged 3500kbps.
Drop your 4tb hard drive on the ground, now drop your DVD/Blu-ray disc on the ground, which one will still play?
In hindsight only a few porn companies were doing Blu-ray/DVD combo packs which has become the norm for Hollywood movie releases.
Not encouraging porn customers to upgrade and futureproof was poor planning.
Blu-ray players were also more expensive back then but are dirt cheap now (and they play DVDs too; upscaling those discs to look better than on any regular DVD player)
Also failure for companies to educate average customers on the benefits besides improved picture and sound quality.
Blu-ray disc if made correctly can last 100 years (your entire lifetime) without suffering disc rot if stored properly; the same can't be said for DVD which sort of defeats the purpose of collecting a physical copy if you might have to eventually re-buy it (if still available) unless you're the type of collector to rip a digital copy for personal use.
DVDs also scratch more easily so you're more likely to have to deal with exchanges, refunds or finding a service who resurfaces discs.
I own a 4K Ultra HD Player even though I don't have a 4K TV yet. I don't use the 4K upscaler but it automatically upscales my DVDs to 1080 and I have no complaints. Also includes HDR and Dolby Vision when I do have the proper setup someday.
1 DVD I thought was defective that glitched on my early 2000s DVD player and late 2010s Samsung Blu-ray player worked without issue on the 4K model. Looks like better hardware/technology made it possible.
I own a modified version. 4K discs are already region free by default but it can now play DVDs from any region and 2K (1080) Blu-rays also.
Some Blu-rays I own and want to buy are Region B locked or DVDs are Region 2 locked. It also can play both NTSC and PAL discs.
220-electronics and Bombay Electronics are legit. You pay more than the dirt cheap Region A/Region 1 models the US only sells officially like on Black Friday sales but if you're going to get a new player why not make it region free and future proof?
They have non 4K region free players if you only want 1080p/1080i max resolution.
Simple Simon, not really, but I think my TV upscale if the player can't. For both, I can tell it is a DVD, not a Blu-ray. I don't know if I am a good judge though because I have 4K TVs.
remember hundreds (if not thousands) of DVD companies got wiped out by tubes. The price is much cheaper now but the companies are dead. All that's left are networks who drop 20 scenes per week. a 9 hr HD or 22 hr SD Blu-ray would be good.
Companies are starting to drop DVD/physical releases entirely. For instance, Zero Tolerance. Blu-ray sales paled to DVD for adult material when they were available, and that includes as of recent per Vinegar Syndrome prior to them dropping the DVD format entirely. Distributors aren't very interested in adult on Blu-ray (I heard this within the last 2 years from an adult producer who was interested in potentially releasing on Blu-ray). With UHD-Blu-ray slowly becoming a bigger option in the mainstream industry, I think it is safe to say that companies that aren't releasing Blu-ray now won't and that companies that aren't releasing Blu-ray now won't upgrade to UHD-Blu-ray.
