But some companies that do great on VHS, think that they will do good on DVD, but if they haven't figured out that DVD authoring is an important thing to know first, they will produce horrid DVDs.

”Time and money, two things I have so little of.
But if I had both, I’d be bored and rich.” –BIGmike.

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I prefer DVDs for various reasons:
better overall video/audio quality,
compactness over VHS tapes, media
lasts longer, etc.

I'm sure videos will enventually
get phased out by DVDs similar to
how music CDs replaced Vinyl records.

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Edited by - outkastfan on 3/4/2004 11:49:19 PM

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Cal444
Somewhere

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The free market economy sometimes takes its time to affect change like this--and given the still high percentage of VHS consumers out there, trying to rush the process by making still salable product simply unavailable seems kind of fiscally irresponsible to me. I have no doubt the VHS will die--but I think it will probably take its sweet time--inferior quality or not.

Now... that certainly doesn't mean that we all wouldn't love to see a few more DVDs produced by Ana/Diabolic... but hey--Cal's heard enough of that. Just don't want to let him off the hook! ::grin::

Mike L.

Edited by - MLyons on 5/14/2003 6:04:19 PM

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Also the adult market is still geared to rentals and a lot of rentals are still in VHS.

Still the extinction of VHS is coming. The market saturation for DVD players is something like 80% and climbing. After a bit VHS is just going to become to friviously and expensive to produce.

R

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I don't mind if companies still release VHS but not if it means instead of DVD *cough*extremeassociates*cough*

my vcr is collecting dust and I will never ever buy VHS again, not even if some movies will never be released on DVD.

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sorry if i'm asking too much. i'm into business and always find info like this for any industry interesting

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I understand that it is generally cheaper to produce a DVD than video. I would also presume it is cheaper to ship. As such, unless an issue arises over the ability for the adult industry to get acess to the techonology, then I cannot see the basis on which the industry or retailers would favour vhs, or even if not favour it, at least wish to see it phased out. Indeed, the high cost of CD's compared to cassette tapes for music led to lots of grievances ultimately investigated (in the UK) by the Office of Fair Trading some years ago. I cannot see that access to DVD technology for the bigger studios should be an issue. Ditto small producers, which I say by analogy, because some smaller bands have got to the stage of managing the resoucing of producing and marketing their own CD's, for costs reasons, and report that it is not rocket science.

Since VHS does not come with extras, I cannot see that the time for preparing extras shoud, of itself, act as a disincentive against DVD only production. However, the ability (but not necessarily obligation) to add extras, which can be easily accessed, has got to be an incentive to drive DVD forward.

As others have said, ownserhip of DVD machines cannot conceivably be a hurdle.

Viewing

Once you have got DVD there is no going back (perhaps with the exception of old favourites that have yet to make it onto DVD). Scene acess, sound and visuals - VHS simply cannot compete.

Z.

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As for a DVD being lots cheaper, that depends on where you're replicating and duplicating. Evil Angel has it's own VHS duplication lab, but has to outsource for DVD replication, so the prices aren't as separate as they seem to be for other companies.

People saying that DVD is so "cheap" to make still seem to be thinking of it as a secondary item to the VHS. Once the VHS isn't considered the breaking-even product, DVD will have to break even AND make a significant profit all-in-one. And DVD brought in the added costs of a DVD-production department (for companies that do DVDs right), and authoring costs, and the extra editing for the behind-the-scenes and extras.

I love DVD, and am looking forward to the day when we don't need to make VHS versions of new movies. But for now, there is more than enough demand for VHS to jusify continuing VHS.

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The whole premise of this thread is stupid. If dropping VHS made financial sense it would happen - it hasn't, so obviously it doesn't. You only have to make a couple of thousand tapes that don't shift once to know that times they are a'changing so rest assured that when the viability for VHS goes, so will production.

SNP.

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Cal444
Somewhere

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Firstly, none of the posters so far are suggesting that VHS is a better format.

Secondly, the cost issue seems to be capital rather than revenue because the cost of outside production is not preventing DVD's being made and sold at a competitive price at the moment. Plus, for the future, once the leap to inhouse production is made the investment will be clawed back (just like when the investment in VHS was made). Therefore, unless VHS produces greater profits which presently subsidises the DVD sales, the only residual issue must surely be whether VHS could feasibly cease.

Therefore, is it not correct to say that it is only necessary to produce VHS if your sales would seriously suffer (ie your customers go elsewhere) if you did not produce VHS ? I think Tricia is saying that the studio that cuts VHS would indeed suffer in this way because, presumably, the 50% VHS sales is by choice. Since I cannot imagine anyone whould choose VHS format if they owned a DVD player, Tricia's statistic suggets that 50% of her customers have not got a DVD player.

At the moment, the election is to buy VHS rather than DVD but that is a choice you offer. What if it was a choice of 'here is a DVD only product, take it or leave it'. If everybody stops making VHS then, if Cal is right, there will be a lot of DVD players bought very quickly ! Of course, not everybody would stop producing VHS overnight and the fear is a loss of sales to the competition.

However, if the big outfits take the leap in one go (in an non antitrust kind of way) they will represent the bulk of the product on the shelf. If virtually all the product on the shelf is DVD then the average punter is faced with the following choice, 'do I stick to VHS and only get to choose outof x number of titles or do I get a DVD at fifty bucks and get to choose out of 5x number of titles'. Tough call.

Clearly it cannot be that simple and this is only my first take on the economics of it. One factor I have yet to think through is the demographics of the punters. There has got to be a difference between the casual punter and those that are a bit more discerning. People who track down a film because of who is in it or who directed it or will get it sent half way round the world are not going to write of a studio for the sake of buying a DVD player. I'd also be interested to know whether the ratio of DVD to VHS is markedly different between internet and store sales. This info would have a direct link to the liklihood of people electing to switch medium or switch studio.

I'd be interested to hear an inside view on these ramblings.

Z.

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I think anybody that is still buying porn on vhs is wasting their money. Vhs will be gone sooner or later and everyone will be buying all their porn on dvd. Once this happens you will regret not having bought those tapes on dvd format as they will look very outdated against the performance of dvd.

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As far as getting unwatchable vhs's from the book store goes they must have rented one hell of a lot to be in
that poor shape. All of our vhs tapes are checked for
quality before being shipped. Occasionally I'm sure
a clunker slips through but I rarely hear of vhs problems.

Cal444
Somewhere

Edited by - cal444 on 5/16/2003 9:19:09 PM

Edited by - cal444 on 5/16/2003 9:25:37 PM

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The people at my local store tell me that they still sell (and rent) more VHS than DVD, but that the ratio of sales to rentals are much higher for DVD (basically DVD people are more likely to buy and VHS people are more likely to rent)

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So, although the best of the established adult video companies (in my humble opinion, Evil Angel, Anabolic/Diabolic, and Red Light District) do make wonderful DVD transfers, for many lesser companies (whose videos still bear watching) the VHS versions of their videos are consistently of a higher quality, in terms of both how good they look (ample and attractive color saturation, lack of pixelation, etc.) and how well they interface with the playing equipment (e.g., no irritating malfunctions due to authoring errors). I think that VHS will be around in the porn world until the quality of the DVDs marketed by most porn producers is uniformly higher and approaches the taken-for-granted reliability and quality of mainstream DVDs (because in the mainstream market, the VHS format seems to be dying a quicker and more decisive death).

Edited by - Bob on 5/17/2003 5:32:23 AM

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Typo edited.

Edited by - Ramsey on 5/17/2003 6:02:57 PM

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I never buy an adult dvd until I rent it on vhs first.

CC

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I don't even buy VHS movies anymore. If a movie I want is out on VHS only, then i'll just buy something else. Most people would say DVD picture quality is only an advantage on mainstream movies where they use Panavision cameras. However, any porn movie filmed on a high end DV Camera will show the huge benifit. Maybe even more so since its a digital source.

Speaking of changeover, when am I going to see some Widescreen porn :) ????

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I've seen the preview and a few of my current favorite black performers are in this movie (see Favorite Black Performers thread in Polls forum).

As much as I want to see this movie now , does it make any sense for me to spend $5 today to rent it knowing that on Monday, I'll be spending $18 to buy it?

Sure there have been afew times that I have bought a DVD without renting the movie first that I have been disappointed. But given my criteria for buying without first renting, those occasions have been rare.

I certainly have saved more money by not renting, than I have wasted in buying a disc that I otherwise wouldn't have if I had previously rented it.

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I do still occasionally buy VHS when I think that the film isn't going to be coming out on DVD. Since I got my DVD player, I've only purchased three films on VHS (a five year period approximately). I was wrong on one of them and it did get released but I'm pretty sure that I was right on the other two and I'd prefer to have them on VHS than nothing at all.

Edited to add Digital Playground.

Edited by - flash on 5/17/2003 3:27:20 PM

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Actually, the vast majority of porn product is now shot digitally and has been for the past several years, partcularly by the gonzo companies. The VX1000, 2000 and Canon GL1 and XL1 are standard industry cameras and all record in 5:1 compressed mini DV. Some people are still shooting features on Beta Sp which is analog but many of the the higher end feature directors are slowly switching to HD, which is a little impractical at the moment for companies producing gonzo but eventually HD will have to be addressed by everyone.

From technical standpoint, most duplication facilitiies transfer a digital master to Beta Sp because they have been set up like this since before the digital camcorder revolution of the mid-nineties and it would be very expensive to replace all those Beta decks with Digi-Beta decks or even DVCAM decks.
Technically, Beta Sp is still a superior format even though it is analog because it is less compressed than Mini DV or DVCAM but duping digital edits directly to VHS would bypass an unnecessary generation loss. At the end of the day, if a company chooses to use inferior or recycled VHS tape stock, the quality will be crap no matter what format the movie originated on.

Aside from the obvious benefits of DVD over VHS, it has also enabled companies to give more to the consumer for the same price. VHS releases don't generally come with bonus features like extra scenes or "Behind the Scenes" segments. Personally, I stopped buying VHS of anything years ago.

Quaze

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Although I don't know if this makes as much marketing sense as the two versions being Widescreen and Pan & Scan, this does offer advantages for everybody. People with a widescreen TV can take advantage of the extra resolution provided by the anamorphic process and people with standard 4:3 TV's don't get the artifacts that the anamorphic process can create when compressing the picture for a 4:3 TV.

I have "Club Tropixxx" and am very impressed with the quality of the anamorphic picture on my 34" widescreen set (I haven't watched it on the big widescreen set yet). I hope that more companies start to follow suit in shooting in widescreen HD and creating anamorphic DVD's.

I know that, in the past, I have argued that this didn't make sense in porn yet. My argument was that most people don't have 16:9 TV's yet, therefore the screen dimensions of the primary audience is 4:3. So that's the aspect ratio in which the movie should be shot.

Note: I have never advocated this for mainstream movies. The primary audience for a manistream movie is at a movie theater. Therefore the movie should be shot in widescreen to accomodate that audience. When it is brought to the home video market, I think it should still be in it's Original Aspect Ratio.

Lately, I have been seeing that lots of people have been converting to widescreen TV's (there are 5 people that I work with who have already converted and I have a few friends who are getting ready to do so). That being the case, I think that majority of the primary audience of adult video will soon (a couple of years) own a 16:9 TV. Therefore, I think it's now time for the adult companies go give greater consideration toward shooting widescreen.

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Cal444
Somewhere trying to stay up with it all

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The vast majority of defective DVD's that I have bought have come from companies like Zane, Empire, Sunshine, etc...

I have had a few defective discs from the better companies, but in all cases either the store replaced the movie with another copy of the same title that didn't have the problem (the defect was unique to the specific disc, not the entire run) or the company has re-released the disc that has the problem and replaced the problem disc for free.

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BECAUSE IT SELLS

There is a theory, that for many households they have the DVD player up front in the living room for the family, and Dad has moved the old VHS machine to his den/bedroom/etc to watch his porn. Of course its just a theory.

While VHS sales are declining, and the trend is showing that inevitably it will be phased out, we are still producing, replicating and certainly selling TONS of VHS product.

Being a global company with distribution in over 50 countries, Private might be a tad different because obviously, not every country is as advanced technologically as the US and there are still millions of VHS machines out there.

Yeah i know, it boggles my mind too, personally Ive gone through 3 dvd players allready and I havent bought/watched anything on tape in YEARS, but theres still alot of people in the US and other countries around the world that love their VHS

Best,

Vic

Vic Thomas
Private North America

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Travis
Zero Tolerance Entertainment

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I think dvd recorders are about 2 years away from mass market. It's going to be HDTV that really pushes them over the top, and the government/business still can't decide on a high density format.

Why spend the extra cash to record on a crummy 4.7 gig dvd when a vhs tape does just as well. but put the entire LOTR trilogy on one high density DVD, and watch what fucking happens.

CC

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Btw, are there porn companies who are DVD-only?

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It will be great when we have to produce,package,warehouse and ship just one format. Believe it or not, there is still a high demand for VHS tapes. Sales on VHS have dropped off a lot over the past 18 months, but VHS still represents 35-40% of my initial sales on a New Release.

MIKE RUBINSTEIN
OWNER
DEVIL'S FILM INC.

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I mean, DVD was almost made with porn in mind. Crystal clear picture, perfect freeze-frame, no wear and tear on the disc when it's frequently fast-forwarded, "rewound," or paused. Most players even have a Zoom option.

I'd guess that rental might be a big factor there, because the renters probably figure everyone has a VCR, so why bother getting both.

I can really see DVD making adult entertainment a big consumer product, though. Since the introduction of the DVD format has conincided with the the boom of the internet, it's put porn at everyone's fingertips. Until I got a DVD player, I had never bought a single adult VHS, nor rented one, as there's nowhere near me to actually buy or rent them. (Also, the idea of "previously used" porn seems a little icky.) But since I've gotten a DVD player and internet access, I've acquired a rather extensive porn library on DVD.

Between the selection and bargains available at online retailers, to the privacy (you don't have to be seen hanging around Ye Olde Dildo Shack to get your porn fix) and trustworthiness of great places like FiveStar and AdultDVDEmpire, I can see adult entertainment on DVD exploding in the near future.

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