The adult industry is famously quick to embrace new technology, and it's been an early adopter of everything from streaming video to multi-angle DVD and high definition video - so what the adult industry adopts today, the mainstream is likely to adopt tomorrow.
With Porn 1.0 the industry delivered pictures and video; with 2.0 it delivered fan sites, social networking and YouTube-style video portals. So what's - ahem - coming soon? We discover the tech that's getting adult producers excited.
Here comes HD
Adult producers were quick to embrace high-definition DVD - and some, such as Vivid Adult Entertainment, dubbed the "Microsoft of Porn", embraced both HD DVD and Blu-ray. With HD DVD already dead, we asked Vivid co-founder Steven Hirsch if Blu-ray has a long term future. "The Blu-ray business is steady, probably decreasing a little bit, although that's probably because there are a lot more Blu-ray titles being released so individual unit sales have decreased," he says.
"It's still a business, but it's not a business that I think will be a big revenue driver in years to come." Does he agree with Bill Gates that this is probably the last disc-based format we'll see? "I think that's probably the case. I think that people are going online to watch movies through video on demand, cable, DirectTV, pay per view and so on. I don't see the Blu-ray business increasing."
Although HD video is increasingly available online, the combination of bandwidth costs - HD video uses roughly five times the bandwidth of standard definition video, which means of course it's five times more expensive to deliver - and lack of suitably quick broadband connections means that it's still largely limited to downloadable rather than streaming video.
Hirsch explains: "We shoot all our movies in HD, because we want to have the best quality available, but we don't really see HD via the internet at this point," Hirsch explains. "It takes up too much bandwidth, and people don't really have the capability to watch it - and obviously on TV you don't get HD adult channels yet, although Hustler's getting ready to launch one. I do think it's important to shoot in HD, though, so that we have that capability when it becomes more feasible."
