I think that’s a pretty difficult claim to support. I’ve more often seen it expressed as VHS + lower price > Betamax + technical superiority. VHS players were priced substantially lower than Betamax, making them more affordable for the run-of-the-mill consumer.
I think all of those are factors. How about this equation:
VHS + lower price + porn + extra length > Beta + marginal technical superiority
I call extra length a huge huge technical superiority. If I want to record a two hour movie while I am not at home a 1 hour tape flat out will not work. No amount a picture quality superiority will make it work.
OK. Under your definition, length wins. Under mine, it has a much lower value. 
There is a size doesn’t matter joke in here somewhere.
In general I think that picture quality does not matter to people as much as some think it does. Most restaurants and bars I have been to lately that have wide screen TVs have them set up incorrectly. The normal aspect ratio broadcasts have been stretched to fit the screen so every body looks short and fat. I have been to people’s homes where this is the case it drives me nuts but no one else seems to notice or care.
Even when VHS later offered improved video quality with Super VHS, no one really cared much. S-VHS players were even backwards compatible with VHS tapes, so it didn’t even incure a huge format change cost.
HiFi was another story. People were willing to buy new hardward for hifi VHS, and later for Dolby Surround, THX, and confusing morass of home theater systems.
Argh! that drives me insane. My BIL (who weighs 400 lbs) finds this perfectly ok and forces everyone to see the TV like that.
Yeah, I’d buy that. I suspect of those factors, porn would probably be the lowest weighted of the three.
So are they saying that all those “unrated” DVDs (I’m thinking Team America here) won’t be available on Blu-Ray? Or it will, but not now?
I suspect that the marketplace will find room for DVRs and broadband to coexist with Blue-Ray and/or HD-DVD. My DVR doesn’t let me play it on any set in my house, for example, to watch the movie both in my exercise room (okay its the boiler room with some excercise equipment in it) and in the family room and the bedroom. A DVD does that with ease. And even 500 gigs will fill up quickly with a selection of hi-def movies. DVR is great for timeshifting. Broadband downloads are great to allow access to a wider variety of programming. Of note is that the great Steve Jobs is positiioning to play both sorts of formats: iTunes/video iPods/appleTV but also adopting/promoting the Blue-Ray format, no doubt with plans to have your Mac be so equipped as a media center or perhaps soon to see HD TVs with Mac and integrated BluRay as well as broadband access inside.
Porn will go with the broadband appoach but I doubt that too many porn-o-philes are that keen on paying that much more to be able to see every pore and hair follicle or razor burn anyway.
The article I linked says that SONY has decided that SONY won’t be in the business of copying/producting adult content on Blu-Ray. The article mentions that someone else (not SONY) will have to do the pressing. Sony isn’t banning porn. They just aren’t recording it themselves.
But my question wasn’t about porn - it was about mainstream movies, many of which now get released on DVD as a somewhat different version than what appeared in theaters, and therefore unrated. Sony (are they the only one pressing movies onto Blue Ray now?) will only make the version of the movie that was released to theaters? No director’s cuts, etc.?
Sony doesn’t have a lock on the disc production, exactly. HD-DVD discs can be produced with little retooling of existing DVD factories, while Blu-Ray discs require an entirely new manufacturing set up, so it’s cheaper to produce HD-DVD discs than Blu-Rays. HD-DVD has a significantly lower amount of storage space than Blu-Ray. HD-DVD players do have an advantage that if a film is properly encoded, you can slap an image of anyone else’s face over that of the actors.
If someone has a factory that can make Blu-Ray discs, they can make porno Blu-Ray discs, but they won’t be able to use the Blu-Ray logo.
Porn may not drive the adoption of technology like HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs (most of the porn producers make more money from selling access to downloadable movies and the like), but the perception that porn is the driving force might cause the death of Blu-Ray.
It is just a press release not a detailed statement of how they would go about deciding what to press or not to press.