Digital Journal — Once again, the porn industry is making Hollywood look like a second-rate limp loser who just can’t get it up. Adult entertainment companies are progressing with technology advancements, acting as canaries in a coal mine — if they succeed, big-name studios will likely follow.
Today, Vivid Entertainment announced it will sell its adult films through the online movie service CinemaNow, allowing consumers to burn DVDs that will play on any screen, not just a computer. “It’s as simple as downloading a song, but you’ll have a personal DVD you can take anywhere you want and enjoy anytime you want,” said Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment. Films will cost $20 (US) each.
Chalk up another win for the adult film business, which pioneered the home video market before Hollywood followed suit. The porn industry also rushed to the Internet while Hollywood saw it as a threat.
“Leave it to the porn industry once again to take the lead on this stuff,” Michael Greeson, founder of The Diffusion Group, a consumer electronics think tank, told Associated Press. “The rest of Hollywood stands back and watches and lets the pornography industry work out all the bugs.”
Most of the big studios have started selling films over the Web, including on CinemaNow (which is partly owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, Microsoft, Cisco and Blockbuster). But until now, buyers could only play backup DVDs on a computer, not a DVD player.
And both Warner Bros. and Universal Studios have launched programs overseas in which consumers who download films also get a DVD in the mail. But the real holy grail, according to analysts, is to pipe major Hollywood movies and TV shows over the Net directly to TV sets, bypassing DVDs altogether.
“The vanguard here is porn,” Greeson told Associated Press. “They made a tremendous amount of money on the Web, but they know they can make more if they get to the living room.”
In fact, the world of porn may also be the realm in which the winner of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war will be decided. Many companies are favouring Blu-ray in large part because many porn businesses are moving to that next-gen format. In an industry raking in $57 billion (US) annually, the adult film industry is the sector to watch when it comes to leading tech trends to a climax.
Paul O’Donovan, an analyst with Gartner, recently said pornography’s support of either DVD format will be a “strong factor” to the uptake of the technology by the general marketplace.
The wild land of money shots is leading the charge while competitors hesitate to make major moves. Anyone hoping to forecast the state of online films, or what DVD format will reign supreme, should closely observe where porn is heading. Who said porn couldn’t be educational?
