Much the way firms battled in the 1980s over VHS and Betamax video formats, tech rivals are fighting over the technology used to deliver and display Web video. Currently, video-streaming services like Netflix Inc. and Google’s YouTube pay patent royalties, as do makers of Blu-ray disc players and other hardware.

These firms pay royalties to an organization called MPEG LA, which is the target of the formal antitrust probe, the people familiar with the matter said. MPEG has amassed pools of patents covering widely used video formats and collects royalties for its members, which include Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

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Such is the case with 3-D, says Keith Richman, who is happy to help them out.* Richman’s Break Media, the dude-centric Web site network, is launching a 3-D Web video channel aimed at advertisers who want to connect themselves with anything 3-D right now. Oh, and people who want to watch 3-D Web video on their TVs and PCs, too.

How many of the latter group are there? Who knows. Can’t be that many, for the time being. But certain brands, like Dell’s (DELL) Alienware, which makes game-centric PCs, are happy to pay up for 3-D content, so Break is happy to make it for them. A sample:

Unknown Title – Watch more free videos

Richman says 3-D video is about 300 percent more expensive to make than run-of-the-mill Web video, because the equipment is expensive and the talent pool that knows how to use it is limited. Cameras for 3-D, at least, will get cheaper within the next few months, but this stuff will be pricey for some time.

If 3-D joins Laserdiscs and Betamax in the great technology graveyard in the sky, then that’s wasted money for Richman and his sponsors. But if he’s right, the payoff is something like the one that HDNet’s Mark Cuban got for betting early on that technology about five years ago: A big head start on something that everyone now takes for granted.

*I’m paraphrasing, of course–Richman is much too politic to describe marketers as “desperate.” I’m sure he said “enthusiastic” or something like that.

Here’s a prime example, via an unnamed magazine’s photo spread. The camera attached to that Betamax, by the way, clocked in at a featherweight five pounds.

Historically, the knock on Sony has been that it has a blind allegiance to its own proprietary technology. From Betamax to ATRAC, Sony’s compression format which eventually lost out to MP3, the company often paid the price for its NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrome.

If Sony’s format didn’t become the standard, early Sony adopters were left in the dark. Are there any Digital Audio Tape users out there?

The company, however, seems to have had a change of heart in recent years.

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“I thought it would hurt my brain using a qwerty,” says the 39-year-old technology director in Cambridge, Mass. He wanted something different. He wanted a Dvorak.

The Dvorak keyboard layout, though around for decades, is as little-known among the general typing population as it is passionately embraced by its devotees. It is to the keyboard what Esperanto is to language and Betamax to videotape. Fans say it lets them type at blazing fast speeds, with less strain on their hands and wrists than typing on a conventional keyboard.

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Why so reserved? Maybe it’s because Sony (SNE) is struggling through yet  another restructuring, so a big party would seem inappropriate. Maybe because Sony views the Walkman’s birthday as a lot of middle-aged people view their birthdays: Markers of bygone eras and missed opportunities. Or else it’s just Apple’s (AAPL) fault. Associated Press:

The manufacturer, which also makes Vaio personal computers and Cyber-shot cameras, hasn’t had a decisive hit like the Walkman for years, and has taken a battering in the portable music player market to Apple Inc.’s iPod.

Sony has sold 385 million Walkman machines worldwide in 30 years as it evolved from playing cassettes to compact disks then minidisks — a smaller version of the CD — and finally digital files. Apple has sold more than 210 million iPod machines worldwide in eight years….

The archival exhibit shows other Sony products that have been discontinued or lost out to competition over the years — the Betamax video cassette recorder, the Trinitron TV, the Aibo dog-shaped robotic pet.

I do remember hearing some Sony folks mutter hopeful words about a new line of Walkmans that came preloaded with music from Sony artists like Beyoncé and were supposedly flying off the shelves at Wal-Mart (WMT). But that was a while ago, come to think of it, and I haven’t heard about it since.

In any case, just because Sony’s being bashful about the Walkman’s history doesn’t make it less interesting. You can learn more about it at Sony’s online archive, which is compelling despite the fact that it’s a stilted corporate hagiography. Start reading at Chapter 17, part 2: “Listening to Stereophonic Sound While Walking.”

Huh. So perhaps “The Dark Knight” will turn out to be the iPhone 3G of movies.

By June, Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines and, of course, standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players.”

–Susan Chronister of Wal-Mart sticks a fork in HD DVD.

HD DVD may soon join Betamax in the consumer electronics industry’s Museum of Failed Formats. Though publicly HD DVD champion Toshiba professes its commitment to the next generation DVD standard, privately it’s plotting its demise. Sources close to the company tell the Hollywood Reporter that the continued marginalization of HD DVD by movie studios and big box retailers like Wal-Mart has driven Toshiba to concede defeat in the DVD format war. The company plans to pull the plug on HD DVD in a matter of weeks. “An announcement is coming soon,” said one source close to the HD DVD camp.

But not soon enough for some, who are finally seeing their predictions of an HD DVD rout borne out. “Blu-ray’s better, and I told everyone,” said film director Michael Bay. “I was very vocal about it. I knew HD [DVD] was not going to make it. Am I thrilled? It really wasn’t my fight, but remember what I said in the press? I was kind of saying HD [DVD]‘s going to lose… No one believed me.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Will the Last Person to Leave the HD DVD Camp Please Turn Off the Blu-ray Player?
• There’s a Singing Fat Lady Here to See You, Sir.
• Ah Yes, a $2.7 Million Super Bowl Ad Will Fix Everything …
• Mistah HD DVD–He Dead …

Though Paramount Pictures has denied reports that it plans to abandon the next-generation DVD format, news of an escape clause in its HD DVD contract allowing it to release films on Blu-ray has the industry wondering aloud about the format’s continued viability.

And for good reason. Earlier this week Universal’s HD DVD-exclusive contract ended. And last Friday, on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show, Warner Bros. stunned the industry by announcing plans to end support of the format entirely in June. “[That] maybe the pivotal event that resolves the format war,” said Thomas Coughlin of Coughlin Associates. “It certainly changes the rules and the playing field. I think everyone is trying to reassess what this means–including the HD DVD guys. [If Blu-ray does come out on top] it would be poetic justice after the Betamax vs. VHS war. That time, Sony lost.”

But is it truly the format’s death knell? Ovum analyst Carl Gressum says no. “There is a lot of speculation whether this is the end of HD DVD,” he said. “It is not, but we are getting dangerously close to a ‘chapter 11’ for the group. If the other supporting studios now decide to drop HD DVD, the situation will turn dire, and HD DVD could become more of a replacement to DVD on the PC client than as a movie-distribution playback format.”

UPDATE: Universal Pictures flatly denies it’s abandoning the HD DVD format. Said Ken Graffeo, executive vice president of HD strategic marketing for Universal Studios Home Entertainment, “Contrary to unsubstantiated rumors from unnamed sources, Universal’s current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format.”

Sony wants me to publish my films on HD DVD.”

–Joone, founder of adult-entertainment company Digital Playground

If history is any guide, the victor in the battle over the next-generation DVD optical-media standard won’t be determined by the Hollywood studios, but by performers with names like Flick Shagwell and Wendy Whoppers. The adult-entertainment industry, after all, is widely credited with tipping the balance of the videotape format war in favor of VHS, giving it the critical mass of support it needed to check the advance of Sony’s competing Betamax format and turn the battle into a rout.

It should come as little surprise, then, that Sony has reportedly begun offering a bit of technical support to the Japanese porn industry, which has apparently been having a bit of trouble mass-producing its products for Blu-ray Disc. “In Japan, there are some problems. Companies cannot press Blu-ray Discs because they cannot touch adult-related contracts,” Kiyotaka Konno, director of administration for Japanese DVD replication outfit Assist Corp., told Network World. “So we asked some makers in Taiwan to do the work, and then we import the discs back to Japan. The Taiwanese company was able to obtain a pressing machine from Sony and will start mass production in August.”

So it looks like we’ll see Blu-ray tentacle porn after all.

An interesting turnabout for Sony, though the company claims its longstanding policy against manufacturing DVDs or videocassettes with adult content remains unchanged. Lucky for Sony that policy doesn’t extend to other countries–especially when HD DVD has taken an early lead over Blu-ray Disc in the battle to become the next-generation DVD format.