The adult video industry has long been credited with resolving the VHS versus Beta war of past, and that same industry may just be settling a video format war again. I'm not talking about the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD battle of last year, which Warner decided for us all on "Blu-Friday" just before CES and the AVN Expo of 2008. This time, the adult video industry is really ahead of the curve with what they are working on for high definition content.

Those with Van Nuys and Chatsworth, California zip codes have been producing HD porn for over two years now with a fetish for HD DVD in the early goings because of lower cost of manufacturing and lack of mandatory licensing fees. At the AVN Expo last January, Blu-ray discs were just starting to show up in adult video booths, while HD DVD's were present en masse. Many studios had to quickly retool their production plans to keep pace with the winner of the silver disc format war especially after the "Blu-Friday" massacre at the 2008 CES show which runs concurrently with the AVN Expo in Las Vegas every January.

The HD disc market has been hit and miss for the adult industry, while some high end online and brick and mortar shops can and do sell Blu-ray discs. The majority of sales are still standard definition DVD's and many retailers tried to sell the new formats but aren't been able to. The Blu-ray consumer seems to be looking for the best titles, which Joone, president and founder of Digital Playground, one of the largest adult studios in the world, says have raised some major title sales some 50 percent from last year alone on Blu-ray, while smaller studios and lesser titles find sales a small fraction of total market share while HD downloads continue to improve in quality and quantity of sales.

The reasons could be many, while HDTV penetration is high and rapidly growing every year, many homes only have one HDTV in the main viewing area, giving Blu-ray porn limited usability for those with families. It seems the Blu-ray porn consumer is the higher-end of the market, with more disposable income, looking for the best of the genre on this format while everyone has a computer with a display capable of displaying HD content.

So why do I say I think the adult industry is again going to solve the format war for us? Simple, many adult sites have found the Internet to be a hugely successful method of distributing media, and the lack of material costs can improve profit margins as well. Digital Playground is rolling out an entirely new HD download center where clients can download 720p video directly to their iTunes library or for use with their AppleTV, Pink Visual is already distributing HD downloads for use on your computer and others are following suit. It is only a matter of time until the bandwidth expands and we can all freely download 1080p porn over the Internet. There will always be the want for disc ownership, so both conventional and Blu-ray discs will likely be around for a while, especially once the industry begins to take advantage of the BD-Live feature of the newer players, but if history repeats itself, the porn industry will again be the ultimate decider of the final format and in this case, it will be HD downloads leaving major Hollywood studios at the command of the all-powerful dominatrix from the Valley known as the adult industry as they have proven they know how to sell content to consumers in volumes and in formats that mainstream consumers are willing to spend billions on.