CONTENT TRENDS

Video streaming is the latest vehicle that is keeping the adult Internet on the forefront of technology. The InterNext seminar, “Stream On: The Future of Streaming Video is Closer Than You Think,” addressed that fact.CONTENT TRENDS

Video streaming is the latest vehicle that is keeping the adult Internet on the forefront of technology. The InterNext seminar, “Stream On: The Future of Streaming Video is Closer Than You Think,” addressed that fact. Speaking on the panel were Greg Clayman, VS Media (VideoSecrets), Scott Strother, TeN.com, and David Valentiner, FlixxxNow.com.

The speakers elaborated on how they thought streaming would affect the future of online porn.

“Making live and non-live video faster is our goal,” said Clayman. VS Media has created more than 300 hours a day of content from five studios world-wide since 1996. “Balance yourselves, don’t spend too much on bandwidth and go broke,” advised Clayman.

“The key thing to remember is that we can stream out as fast as we want,” Clayman added. “We are limited by what consumers can receive.” He said that we are only using seven to 10% of the lines laid for Internet infrastructure, and that as the Internet gets more sophisticated, we will be able to utilize the unused portions more effectively.

Strother and TeN.com are concentrating on cataloging current video content to allow users to get the video they want when they want. With this type of archiving, users can go back to scenes, make their own video cuts to save sets of scenes, and do other types of customization.

“We want to give our customers everything they want as far as content and delivery,” said Strother. TeN.com’s main focus is on broadband, because he feels that the future of the company is with high-speed video. TeN.com’s highest conversion rate and retention rates are with their broadband customers, so that is where they are concentrating their efforts. (They are not forgetting their modem users, though.)

Valentiner sited FlixxNow’s billing company (iBill) statistics saying that the strongest sites with best retention are for broadband users. “If you don’t have streaming on your website today, you are out of touch,” he said. The better the compression rates get for streaming, added Valentiner, the more popular streaming will be.

For DVD quality, Valentiner said that users are still having to download movies first, rather than stream them. “11MB a minute is just too big to stream.”

“If you don’t have streaming now, get it,” Valentiner urged. “If you have it, move up to bigger streams. That’s where the profits will be.”

Strother agreed. “Everyone needs to be incorporating as much video as possible into their sites.”

Valentiner used the upcoming 2002 AVN Adult Expo as an example of how popular streaming is becoming. “AVN and Sex.tv have put together the biggest streaming event ever,” Valentiner said. “The show has more than one million pre-registered viewers, and they are using 17,000 servers to stream the event. For the first time, more than a million people can watch an event live.”

The panel was asked, “What is involved with having someone start streaming through their site?”

Clayman suggested finding a couple of streaming content providers, signing up for their free programs, and seeing what your customers like. Strother added that the simplest, easiest way to get started is to run video with a buffered download. “Within 15 minutes,” said Valentiner, “you can call VideoSecrets and link back to their servers and have them do all the work for you. All you have to use is simple HTML code.”

When asked which streaming software was going to dominate the playing field (Windows Media, RealTime, or Quicktime files), Strother said they have been focusing on Windows Media Files and Realtime because they like their quality. “I don’t think there will be a winner in the next 5 years,” said Strother. “Be prepared to deliver in all of those formats,” he added. “Keep in mind that Windows Media File is the only format that is DRMable, or Digital Rights Manageable.”

“We are the driving force for streaming technology,” added Valentiner, implying that what the industry chooses could sway which player becomes most popular, as was the case with Beta and VHS videotapes.

Clayman supports Windows Media Files. “MS has the only real open-source video program, with the largest software company behind it,” he said. “Realtime and Quicktime haven’t done that (made their code open source). So, there are say 50,000 programmers making changes and improving Windows Media Player. You can’t stop that kind of momentum. There are still a lot of Mac users that need to be dealt with, as soon as Microsoft figures out that market, they will dominate.”

When the topic of converting files came up, there were differing opinions as to whether individual webmasters should take that on. Valentiner was for hiring someone to encode files, “It’s a moving target, trying to find an affordable and accurate way to encode. It’s best to find a company that gives all the formats to you.” Strother suggested getting Windows Media Cleaner 5, which he said is priced at less than $500. “With one source,” he said, ”I can generate several formats in different media rates at one time.”

As the seminar came to an end, one audience member asked a seemingly obvious but needed question, “What IS streaming?” Strother explained, “The difference between streaming and buffered downloads is that streaming allows you to jump to any point in a video, while buffered download makes you wait to get to that point in the stream.”

The discussion ended as the panelists were asked if the future of billing for streaming was with monthly memberships or one-time transactions. “The one-time transaction is the future,” said Clayman. “The overall mentality of re-occurring billing … the FTC and Visa/Mastercard don’t like. There is a psychological element to it; every month that the bill comes to the house is another chance to have the wife say, ‘am I not good enough for you?’ But if you only have to deal with that question once, and can say so to your spouse, then you are more likely to spend the money.”

Valentiner said that Visa/Mastercard will force us into single charges. “Single-month non-reoccurring charges are doing very well.”

Jenn Ramsey is the owner and webmaster of Hiddenself.com, an erotic, for-women website. She lives in a webhouse (on the net at therealhouse.com).