The Sin in Sin City ... and the Low-Brow in High-Def

Brian Braiker — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:12:02 GMT

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.

Wall of Sound and Fury

Brian Braiker — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:53:26 GMT

Yesterday, the first official day of CES, kicked off with a bunch of announcements from Panasonic President Toshihiro Sakamoto. Chief among them is the 150-inch plasma--which the company is calling the "Life Screen," probably because that sounds better than the "Life Savings Screen"--the largest plasma screen in the world. Although there was no official word from Panasonic, analysts have predicted the TV could go for as much as $100,000. For those of you keeping score at home (and actually know what this stuff means), the TV has 2,000-by-4,000 pixel resolution. It is 11 feet wide. Which is the size of nine 50-inch plasma TVs.

I finally got a look at it today. Here you go:

I included the guy standing in front of the TV in order to give you some perspective as to how freakishly large this thing is. He's 15 feet tall. That cocked thumb alone is the size of a VW Beetle. And yet he is dwarfed--dwarfed!--by the Monster TV. If, for some reason, the screen were to topple over it would kill everyone in Las Vegas. Let us pray that it does not.

As I mentioned in passing before, the only TV I own is a 30 year-old cathode ray dinosaur that runs on diesel fuel. It's sitting on the floor in my house, not even plugged in. I can't lift it up to put it on our coffee table. Years of not watching TV, I've concluded, have made me a better person than you. And yet. Looking at this plasma leviathan, I have only one thought: Daddy want.

The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized : Home Video

The Sin in Sin City ... and the Low-Brow in High-Def

Wall of Sound and Fury