Costs and Benefits of the High-Def War

Apparently there’s a growing market

for failed, antique technology: last week

on eBay, a Betamax Player was on sale for

about $1300. That same day, there were

absolutely no adult fi lms available for

Betamax on eBay. The reason for this?

No such fi lms exist.

As few people know, the adult fi lm

industry has had, among other things,

a hand in deciding the accepted trend

in format rivalries like the famous clash

between Video Home System (VHS) and

Betamax. This sway comes solely from

the industry’s output. In 2005, adult fi lm

sales and rentals amounted to a $4.28 billion

revenue. In that same year, the total

US motion picture box offi ce gross was

less than $1.5 billion.

In order to understand the adult fi lm

industry’s importance to DVDs, let’s

consider the late 70s when home video

was just becoming a reality.

It was then that a “format war”

erupted between competitors VHS and

Betamax for supremacy in home media

distribution. Sony pitched Betamax by

touting its ability to record from one

television station while the screen actually

showed another.

The battle even resulted in a landmark

Supreme Court case, Sony Corp. v.

Universal City Studios. The latter party,

along with several other major studios,

claimed that Betamax’s recording technology

violated copyright laws. The Supreme

Court ruled in favor of legal home

recording, setting an important precedent

that helps protect more modern

technologies like digital video recording.

VHS is dead now, though, and its optical

replacement, the DVD, lies on the

doorstep of electronic obscurity thanks

to the rise of high-defi nition video formats.

Sony’s Blu-ray DVD and Toshiba’s

HD-DVD formats recently waged a battle

to inherit the home theater.

Sony announced in January 2007 that

it would prohibit U.S. adult fi lms from

being distributed in Blu-ray. Yet despite

the popularity of porn, Toshiba lost the

most recent format war when it announced

on Feb. 19 that it would cease

production of HD-DVD.

Blu-ray’s website is now something

of an Arc de Triomphe, announcing the

recent conquests of nearly every production

company and partnerships with retailers

like Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

What does this mean for porn? Well,

adult fi lm may need to fi nd some more

attractive “actors.” The higher visual

quality of Blu-ray DVDs doesn’t really

behoove the adult fi lm industry, which

has never exactly prided itself on high

production values. New technology may

make for prettier explosions in big-budget

action movies, but it also gives us a

better view of the natural human deformities

that mar even the most beautiful

specimens. Paul Gauguin’s paintings of

Tahitian women are seductive precisely

because they leave details to the imagination.

But will high defi nition really add

anything to a poorly-lit money shot that

was fi lmed using decrepit equipment?

And what about highbrow cinema? Will

“Casablanca”—a visually gorgeous movie

that was made without the benefi t of

modern technology—be improved by

Blu-ray technology?

Michael Curtiz’s directing, Ingrid

Bergman’s vulnerability, Bogey’s worldweary

one-liners—these were what made

“Casablanca” great, not a pedantic obsession

with visual detail. The profi t motive

was what fueled the creation of the Bluray

format. While this new format may

end up working out better for porn than

Betamax, it also needs to address artistic

concerns. Otherwise, HD-DVD players

may someday bring in a pretty penny on

eBay.

—Columnist Andrew F. Nunnelly can be

reached at nunnelly@fas.harvard.edu.