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Digit online is reporting that Vivid Entertainment Group, an adult film company (porn), will soon be releasing its’ first Blu-ray Disc title, “Debbie Does Dallas… again”. This is the first known US adult film to be released on the Blu-ray Disc format, scheduled for a March release.

This initial release on Blu-ray will be a test run for Vivid Entertainment. If their first title sells well on Blu-ray, they will proceed with releasing 4 additional titles on Blu-ray Disc this year. But if it this initial test release does not fare well, Vivid will probably drop the Blu-ray format completely.

Releasing content on the Blu-ray Disc format was not an easy endeavor for this Adult film studio. Vivid claims that there are only 8 companies worldwide that are capable of replicating Blu-ray Discs. According to Vivid, 7 of these 8 companies refuse to replicate adult film content due to internal company policies or agreements with third party partners such as Disney. Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, provided Digit online with the following information.

“Blu-ray is extremely expensive to work with,” said Hirsch. Authoring in Blu-ray Disc is about four times more expensive than HD DVD, he said, while replicating is three times as expensive. Authoring is the process of combining video and audio into a format that a disc player can read.

The differences between Blu-ray and HD DVD authoring and replication is extremely large according to Vivid. Although, I have to wonder if these price variances might be due to the lacking competition of Blu-ray replication facilities available to Adult content providers. Does Blu-ray really cost four times more to author and 3 times more to replicate compared to HD DVD? That seems unlikely. A more viable explanation is that the sole Blu-ray replication plant willing to handle adult content has raised their prices because they are the only option available to Vivid. Or perhaps, they are not raising their prices due to the adult content and they are just the most expensive Blu-ray replication facility in operation? It is an interesting question that I hope to answer in the near future by looking into the costs associated with Blu-ray and HD DVD replication.

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