Ron Wagner, director of IT operations at E! Entertainment Television Inc., in Los Angeles, said his company has already chosen the Blu-ray Disc format, in large part because of talk in the porn industry favoring it over rival HD-DVD.

Wagner said that while attending last year's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference in Las Vegas, more than one panel discussed 'several major players in the porn industry going the Blu-ray route.' He said the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD rivalry was also the buzz around NAB 2006 last month.

'If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry's support of VHS],' he said. 'The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS.'

E! Entertainment is using Blu-Ray discs primarily for Sony's XDCam applications for acquisition of television programming materials. The television network, which has more than 85 million subscribers to its celebrity gossip and entertainment news, said it is not considering optical formats for long-term data archiving, but will stick with magnetic tape for now.

The pornography industry, which generates an estimated US$57 billion in annual revenue worldwide, has always been a fast leader when it comes to the use of new technology, according to analysts.