CYBERSPACE — Not for the first time has the well-respected and deep pocketed mainstream entertainment industry been given an opportunity to learn how to increase profits and efficiency by watching its less savory but more daring sibling, adult entertainment.This time around the technology wheel, everyday media moguls are watching as porn production mega giant Vivid Entertainment Group gives customers one more thing that they want: the ability to download videos and burn them onto their own DVDs in order to watch them on their televisions. Hollywood, infamously tight-fisted with distribution of its creative releases, will likely find the results professionally fascinating.
According to industry analysts, even though internet speeds are faster and cleaner than ever before, the average surfer prefers to watch video on their television and not their computer monitor. However, not all consumers are techno savvy enough to know how to install the software and hardware necessary to port video from their computer system to their television. Additionally, hard drive size limits mean that only a certain number of videos can be stored at once, thus creating a self-limiting marketplace.
Hollywood, like the music industry, immediately reacts in a piracy panic when the idea of burnable discs is introduced. With a powerful retail base looking to it for income, the potential for alienation of affections on a professional level is yet another dis-incentive – yet, as Paul Saffo, director of the Institure for the Future in Palo Alto points out, “The simple fact is porn is an early adopter of new media.”
This is a simple fact that many people who would never admit to a first-hand experience with pornographic materials can no longer deny. Given the dollars potentially available if this venture is successful, there’s no way that the board members of many a film related corporation can ignore the bottom line implications.
Vivid’s plan is to introduce 30 titles for burnable video download beginning May 8th via CinamNow, a Marina del Rey-based online entity with an adult arm that enjoys tinkering with technology in the hopes of seeing it ultimately gain broad distribution beyond X. Examples of commonly available adult online elements that have crossed over into the mainstream include pay-per-minute video rentals and the ability of subscribers to save favorite scenes. In the current experiment, Vivid plans to charge $19.95 per title and will include not only the complete release as available on DVD, but also appropriate cover art, bonus material, deleted scenes, and chapter index. The burned disc will automatically copy protect in order to discourage piracy.
Although content and subject matter clearly differ between the adult and non-adult sides of the marketplace, they both share common business models and ideals. Specifically, they each understand the potential bonanza available from developing appealing products for a wide variety of devices, including PDAs, cell phones, television, the internet, and DVD; as well as the importance of having a wide range of distribution methods and points available. Simultaneous with technological growth in delivering content must come improvements in security and stability; so while the offspring of the two extremes may not often publicly nor officially associate with one another, they all share great common purposes: profit, growth, and customer satisfaction.
Porn, always something of a real or perceived outlaw profession, has tended to be more intuitive and responsive to consumer desires, as well as willing to satisfy them in more daring and unorthodox ways than the more respectable and conservative mainstream. According to Richard Doherty of marketing research firm Envisioneering Group, delivering content over the internet for later play on a non-computer specific DVD player is “the holy grail.”
For now Vivid Entertainment Group is closing in on that grail, with fellow adult video producer Red Light District planning to offer similar services in the near future. When big name Hollywood companies do likewise is only a matter of time – and what kind of results come from the upcoming naked experiment.
