Wetlook World Forum

Message # 7545.4.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1

Subject: Re: Re: Re: DVD vs HDDVD etc...........

Date: Mon 22/12/03 04:10:37 GMT

Name: Kev

Email: kev@styx-photography.com

Website:

By WETINRED - stekz@cableone.net Mon 22/12/03 02:02:49 GMT

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By Kev - kev@styx-photography.com Sun 21/12/03 20:08:11 GMT

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The 2MB streams are de facto on Styx now- they are not far behind DVD when it come to quality, especially when played on a video moniter as opposed to a TV- in other words play your DVD on your computer rather than a TV set and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

We produce a lot a 5MB streams too- our way of distributing custom movies is to encode them into 5MB at 1280 pixel resolution and them place the file on an area of the server from which the customer can download.

We anticipate that as connections become faster then +2MB streams will become the norm- we're already capable of doing it, it's the telecoms companies that need to speed things up.

One thing to consider is the MPEG2, as used on DVD's is a very inefficient encoder that needs a huge bitrate to maintain quality. The latest MPEG4 codecs are giving much more efficient compression and can provide DVD quality at significantly lower bitrates.

The major issues surrounding streaming (going to get geeky here) are "chroma clamping" and "luminance clamping"- basically differnces in the colour spaces used between RGB and YUV. I'm working on a process to minimise theses problems on our movies- which will give 90% DVD quality at around 2MB. You are into the law of diminishing returns- but I estimate 99% DVD quality will be attained at around 3MB streams once I get these problems sorted out.

On the subject of HDTV- I don't think the models' flaws would be a major issue- even HDTV won't be as high definition as a good quality jpeg still picture and that doesn't present too many problems with the model's defects. The cost issues surrounding HDTV are more significant, as these are component streams which have a huge bitrates. This means that super powerful computers and hard drive RAID arrays are required to capture and edit. Sony released a studio HDTV system a while back at it cost around $400,000- so it's going to be a while before wetlook fans see anything like that : )

Quite a few of our members already have home cinema set ups with large screens/ projectors- they play our movies via these setups and are delighted with the results.    

By Pooldancer - Sun 21/12/03 14:25:10 GMT

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If the quality of the streaming video's gets to the quality of DVD's, then normal DVD's will become High Definition DVD's, which will still be better than what is available for download. I read that the movie producers are worried about protecting their movies from the downloading of files like NAPSTER did for music.  The article indicated that the producers are worried about a capability that is at least 10 years into the future.

Today, every wetlook site seems to require a different codec than the others, which makes it difficult to download.  I like to watch on my Big Screen TV, which requires me to burn what I download on a DVD (even at a lower quality than even DVD).

Personally, I prefer to purchase a high quality DVD for my big screen TV, unless I can get a high quality  stream to burn on my burner.

I read recently that the Porn producers are worried about High Definition TV since the format quality will show all of the girls flaws.  The good news is that wetlook should not have that problem since the clothing will hide the girls flaws, even as the wet fabric clings to her skin.

By MK - wamtec@compuserve.com Sun 21/12/03 12:00:28 GMT

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It would certainly be nice to have a "video jukebox" kind of video on demand software that can deliver the consumer a customized selection of download for them to be able to choose what bit and pieces they want from a video database. I asked my AE partner if we could do that...but he tells me that the software we would need to run a system like that costs over $16,000....Nigel and Graham could easily write their own video on demand software system...but for a non techie like me...it would mean spending over 10 grand on software to buy a system like that.

I think that until online video streams are at the same quality as a DVD, that dvd's and tapes will still be around for a few more years. By that I mean...even the highest quality bit rate streams that anybody can find on the internet...e.g. 1 megabits plus...are still only 20% of the quality of a DVD. All you have to do is insert a dvd into your dvd player and push the onscreen stats button to reveal the bit rate for a dvd...and it is between 4.6 to 5 megabits...and no online stream can currently match that (at reasonable file sizes). A 500kbps online video is only 10% of the quality of a dvd. I know you and Graham have experimented with doing some 2 megabit streams...so you are about 40% on the way to matching a DVD with those....but until online streams can achieve the 5 megabit level of a DVD disk...I think some purists will still want DVDs on a disk.

DVDs are always going to favored with dieheard fans of movies like the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy.

I am getting a little bored of doing things in the same old way...so I am less concerned about "post production" issues regarding the different methods to deliver media to the fans. I am more concerned about "pre-production" issues...i.e. there are only so many ways that a girl can get wet...and things can get to be rather matter of fact and repetitive after 10 years of shooting unless one attempts to do things differently each year.

I know you guys have some good new ideas planned for 2004...and so do I...cos the technology stuff is really just a "chore" for me (tech issues do not turn me on... I am an anti-geek kinda person) ....  The only way I can sustain an interest in this stuff is by trying new things or new ways each year...and to a great extent...I have lots of folks like Leonmoomin and EuroWAM TEAM to thank for that...cos they have youth and energy and lots of good ideas of their own...so these days I prefer working with other producers and to let them run with their own ideas...cos my brain got "waterlogged" after the 800th model I wetted down...ha ha.

Hey...it's better than counting sheep if you want to get to sleep at night...just reflect back on all the shoots you have done in the last 15 years.

mk

By Kev - kev@styx-photography.com Sun 21/12/03 08:49:50 GMT

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I know what you mean by the "long tapes"- Rob Blaine and I used to banter about it (although his weren't that long) I thought his scenes were too long- and he used to call my stuff the "wash and go girls".

However on the points you mentioned on your original post, I feel, are coming to fruition.

The internet, connection speeds, media production are all becoming more integrated and improving in quality. I feel that the sale of physical media (tapes and DVD's) have little future- that's why a deliberate decision was made to push Styx down the hi-tech route. I think I've said this before, but MP3 downloads (even legal ones LOL) have almost destroyed sales of CD's in countries where the internet has matured as a technology. In the Apple music store, you can effectively compile your own CD of music exactly to your own taste. We're following a similar marketing method with our material- why by a tape/DVD with 10 scenes on it- when you only want to see one of them? With our method someone can join and then download just the scenes they want- maybe all suits or all denim, for example. A further refinement is the abilty to buy just single scenes, without membership, which is something we are looking into at the moment. However this has its dangers in that certain minority interests might lose out as producers might only shoot the most popular scenes- with a membership scheme you have the breathing space to experiment a little and try new things without it becoming a finacial disaster.

On the production costs- we're the same- the models earn more for a day with us than they would for a week doing a "normal job". When you calculate out their rates they are earning as much per hour as a consultant heart surgeon! Graham and I aren't though : )

We'v found that due to the huge take up of memberships with Styx, that we are in a position to increasingly improve everything we do. We feel our material is getting better and better, because we can hire in good models, good locations, clothes, etc. We are also in a position were we can get "economies of scale" we can afford to hire a location for several days, produce loads of material and keep it on the shelf for months or even years. This is all due to the splendid support we have from a sizable proportion of this community- if we didn't have this support our prices would be significantly higher and we would be "hand to mouth" in producing material. It would be difficult to manage a situation where we couldn't produce this months updates because to few people had paid subscription the previous month.

As I've said all along, it truly is a symbiotic relationship- provided both sides play fair, the producer not over charging for the material and the consumer willing to offer financial support.

I have a "yardstick" for value for money (and hence whether the consumer is getting a fair deal)

1 movie or photoset per week should cost around $3 to $5 per month

2 movies or photosets per week should cost around $8 to $10 per month

3 movies or photosets per week should cost around $12 to $15 per month

The actual cost would depend on production values, proportion of movies to photosets, etc, but it's a useful rule of thumb to guage whether a site is working for it's member's interests or to line their own pockets.

By MK - wamtec@compuserve.com Sun 21/12/03 07:56:29 GMT

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I am not sure if Roger mentioned...but Colin Twyford (not his real name) passed away earlier this year...he had quit the wetlook scene for many years after he moved from the uk to work in the middle east, but he contracted an illness while out there and returned to the uk but was never able to fully recover (I think it was hepatitus...Roger knows the full story). He will be sorely missed...cos I remember his "Bride in the Bath" pictorials from Fiesta Magazine in the early 1970's too. Actually...while Fiesta and Mayfair magazines were given credit for much of the early birth of wetlook in the uk media world...it was not really the magazine publishers that promoted wetlook...it was a few diehard amateur phototographers like Colin Twyford...plus Bill Shipton who worked as a writer for Mayfair and Fiesta too.

As for the way prices change over the years...it is true...the cost to produce media for the public..is a simple mathematical equation of what the production costs are...divided by how many people are ordering that product. Therefore..the more people that join the bandwagon...the more the prices will come down.

Just look at the way amateur wetlook tapes have evolved from the late 1980's ...to what they are today. In the late 1980's the few producers who made a custom wetlook tape...just gave you one girl in one outfit getting wet FOR ONE ENTIRE HOUR...ha ha..and they used to charge $75 for a 1hr 1 girl tape (and people would buy that too...e.g. the LLAPH series).  These days..the consumer is more sophisticated and opinionated...and demands lots of different girls, different outfits, different locations..all on  the same mult-facted tape...for only $30 or so.

One thing is for sure...modelling fees have not gotten any cheaper in the last 15 years...we all pay our models VERY well (my girls all get paid more in one day working with me, than they would make in a office job in one whole week). Production costs for models, locations et al have all risen...but because the customer base is growing larger now...prices can come down.

mk

By Kev - kev@styx-photography.com Sun 21/12/03 04:46:00 GMT

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We used to have a mailing list, which, if we were lucky, we could add maybe 5 or 6 people too each time we advertised. bear in mind this was over 15 years ago and it used to cost nearly £100 ($170) for each advert. We used to mail shot every six months with our latest photosets (eventually we started producing video tapes too).

We updated Stywetworld this week with 340 pix in 4 photosets-at a cost of less than $1 per photoset (you have to do the maths).

This works out at around 5 cents per picture

Back then photosets, mainly from Aquantics, used to come as unmounted 35mm slides and used to be around £20 ($35) for a set of 36- if I remember correctly. A cost of around $1 per picture.

A friend of mine, whom I have known for years and years still has a micro-fiche viewer for looking at these slides- not a very convenient way of viewing your latest purchase : )

So despite complaints from certain quarters, compared to 15 or 20 years ago, there is more WAM material than ever, it's far far cheaper then ever it was (less than 1/20 of the old price) and is available instantly, without all the hassle of mail order.

So much for the "good old days"- it could take us a year to add only 50 people to our mailing list- now you can launch a new site and have 1000 visitors within a few hours.

However one thing it does show, is that the more people who buy stuff (and share the cost)the cheaper it gets to supply it. How many products (movies, music, magazines, books, etc) are 1/20 of the cost they were 15 years ago? Just shows what the WAM producers can do with support.

By MK - wamtec@compuserve.com Sun 21/12/03 03:27:27 GMT

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Heck...I can remember the early days in the 1980's (before the internet) when we first started to try and find other people who shared our weird interests (wetfan remembers this well)...i.e. prior to the internet, the only email services you could use were Compuserve and Prodigy...and then you could only talk to people on the same proprietary service....and the only way to try and find other like-minded people online was to post classified ads on Compuserve...and then you were lucky to find 10 people interested in this stuff. In the non-pc world, in the 1980's, in the USA you could only find wet fans if you joined the hardcopy newsletter mailing list for PUMPING WATER newsletter...that later evolved into The Wetlook Newsletter that Wetfan ran for many years. Those newsletters and compuserve, plus classified ads in Bill's Splosh magazine...where the only way to find other people who shared your interest. And then...it was hard to find more than 20 to 30 people who liked this stuff.

But now thanks to the Internet, and it is great to see so many wet fans discovering this stuff from all over the world. So...all this traffic that Graham, Kev and Nigel are helping to create...is indeed a good thing.

The more people that find this stuff, the more traffic that gets generated...the more this sub-culture will gain more acceptability in the main stream world.

My wish list for 2004 will be that technology hardware and software will continue to advance at a high pace and enable us to deliver things in better ways in the future (i.e. better video compression codecs that will produce higher quality bit rate online videos at smaller file sizes, upgraded dsl and cable modem broadband systems that will triple people's download speeds, bigger and more affordable servers, more affordable bandwidth etc).

As for tv clip collectors like me...my biggest thanks would be to Arthur C Clarke (who invented the concept of satellite communications back in the 1940's) and to the Nasa space program...for causing most of the tech tools we use today to be invented. And...in an ironic twist...one has to thank the porn industry too...cos despite what anybody thinks about porn...it is man's desire for porn that has been the leading force that has driven the invention of all these media and streaming video tools you see today. Without the need to see porn...the internet would have stayed as largely a text based environment for universities and scientists....

MK

By Graham (UK) - graham@styxwetworld.com Sat 20/12/03 20:08:26 GMT

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Sure, we just did a huge update and added some bonus movies too. So, we expected a big hit yesterday and for the next few days. But we just seen 24 hours of amazing bandwidth usage and watched our members visiting the site like excited kids at the candy jar. Funny - we also saw a record number of them blocked for breaking the daily download limit which we increased specifically for this period. Note to members - if you are blocked, you'll find it will automatically lift in 24 hours. The machanism is in place to share the site around ALL the members fairly.

Anyway ... to the bandwidth ... in the last 24 hours, we served up 47Gb of data to members.

To put that in perspective --- an "average" Styx day is around 8 to 10Gb --- JW gave away 36Gb in a month on his site --- the Vintage Wet site averages around 35Gb of bandwidth in a month. A normal (if there is such a thing) website might be expected to serve up 5Gb in a month and a typical hosting company would sell you around 10Gb bandwidth for a month.

It's a good job that Styx has TWO 1 Terrabyte servers - that's all that I can say.

Graham