Brian Braiker
|
Jan 9, 2008 06:12
Today in breaking Vegas news: the Adult Entertainment Expo has
kicked off in earnest, if you can use that word to describe anything
the adult industry does. The porn show and the gadget show usually
occur concurrently, planets in parallel orbit, peeking at each other
from a safe distance. The vast majority of CES's show space is at the
Las Vegas Convention Center. But there is a fairly large number of
exhibitors located a quick bus ride across town at the Sands Hotel. As
it happens, the Adult Expo is also being held at the Sands hotel this
year--and by a delicious twist of fate, about 100 yards away from the "Sandbox Summit" for child-friendly technology. Ah, Vegas, you saucy minx of a party hostess you.
In
the interest of, uh, hard news, I finagled myself an Adult Expo press
pass and sauntered around the exhibition space (and boy howdy, do these
people ever live up to their status as official "exhibitors"). Now this
is a family CES blog, so I am going to really try to keep things
relevant here. As I sauntered around the floor, failing utterly to not
look completely awkward, I saw just as many flat screen TVs on display
as there are scattered about CES. And, weirdly, I kept noticing signs
for HD-DVD. Two thoughts instantly occurred to me:
1. I wonder if Warner Bros.'s recent decision to go with Blu-ray is going to have ripples through the porn world. And ...
2. High-definition porn? Eeeew.
A year ago, some media folks were inclined to think that porn was going to be the deciding factor in the high-def format wars. This, of course, assumed the industry was as big--and therefore as influential--as it claims to be, which it probably isn't.
(When VHS beat Betamax as the dominant home video tape format, one
theory was that Betamax lost because porn cast the deciding vote for
VHS--also probably not true.)
Now
that Warner Bros. has chosen sides in the latest format war, it seems
likely that Blu-ray will emerge the dominant technology. But here in
the Hustler booth is a big HD-DVD sign. I asked Drew Rosenfeld, Hustler
Video Group's creative director, if he now regretted having apparently
cast his lot with HD. "At this point, we're thinking of shifting gears
and going completely Blu-ray," he says. The industry has been reluctant
to fully embrace Blu-ray, he says, because it's more difficult and
expensive to replicate (that is, to put the content onto disc). Hustler
has so far released one DVD on the format, he says, and they've had to
have the discs replicated in Taiwan--a hotbed of piracy, which is a
massive scourge on the industry. He anticipates releasing "a full range
of Blu-ray products" by mid-year.
Bruce Whitney at Adam &
Eve Pictures says his company has been slow to jump into the high
definition market precisely because there wasn't yet a single dominant
format. "We've been unsure how the high-definition market is going to
work out," he says. The company, which also had a few HD-DVD logos up
in its booth, has released four titles on HD-DVD and none on Blu-ray
(the first Blu-ray release won't come before May, says Whitney).
In
this way, Adam & Eve is part of a broader industry trend, says
Justin Bourne, an associate editor at Adult Video News, the trade
publication that sponsors the Expo. "I think, just to be safe, the
industry is going both ways," he says with no trace of irony. "[Warner
Bros.] will have an effect, but I don't think it's going to happen for
a while."
The old aphorism is that porn peddlers are the earliest of high tech
adopters (also seen at the Expo: a vibrator that plugs into your iPod
and buzzes in rhythm). But this time around the adult industry needs to
take the same wait-and-see approach the rest of us do. Fortunately for
them they know a thing or two about staying power.
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