Picture it: all the porn of the Internet and DVD, streaming straight into your TV in high definition. No more adult-store rentals, limited pay-per-view selection or typing a credit-card number into a box on an adult site.
That's the idea behind IPTV, yet another next-big-thing technology that threatens to upend the traditional way of doing things.
The idea goes like this: Internet access via broadband is fast, potentially much faster than the cable lines that bring HBO, ESPN and the Playboy Channel to homes across the country. So why not bring video to customers over broadband - from Hollywood blockbusters to Tranny, Get Your Gun - and let them watch it on their giant plasma TVs?
The benefits would include instant access to huge libraries of millions of videos, including porn of every genre, instead of just the limited titles available through pay-per-view via cable. And no one needs to sit in an office chair watching a small computer monitor because the video shows up on the TV in the living room - or bedroom.
IPTV has been slow to catch on, but things may be about to change.
A major development came in fall 2007, when the DISH Network began offering adult "After Hours" movies to satellite customers through IPTV connections.
Meanwhile, a slew of other companies are experimenting with the general concept of IPTV, or Internet protocol television.
Some players, like AppleTV, require users to tinker with their computers to make interfaces, said Peter Imbres, an analyst with Hill and Knowlton. But telephone companies, eager to compete with cable providers, are trying to remove the home computer from the equation by creating services like Verizon's FiOS, a TV-by-fiber-optic-cable system that offers service "almost indistinguishable from the cable TV experience for the user," Imbres said.
In the adult industry, some entrepreneurs are working with IPTV companies, looking to bypass cable and create better connections with customers.
Wicked Pictures, for example, has been working with Entice.tv and ITVN and soon will offer programming to Vudu, a system that has been supplying mainstream content through set-top boxes.
IPTV is "great for studios," said Avi Bitton, Wicked Pictures' chief technology officer. "Anything that enhances the one-to-one reach between your content and fans is good."
Entice.tv has been around for about two years, offering rental or for-purchase porn titles from studios like Digital Sin and Nicholas Steele Productions. Customers must install special software on their computers and hook them up to televisions before watching videos, which can be in high definition.
But despite the additional distribution channel, some studios, like Kick Ass Pictures - whose content is with Entice.tv, aren't seeing returns. The company's president, Mark Kulkis, said he is getting any sales through the platform.
Meanwhile, ITVN - formerly XTV - has offered video-via-broadband programming for years, including porn titles, through special set-up boxes. But it only made about $1 million in 2006 and lost $6.1 million, according to financial records.
In addition, an adult-only platform called FyreTV plans to release its own IPTV service using a set-top box and DSL lines.
So is IPTV the future? Will it, as some proponents say, replace DVDs, the Internet and traditional pay-per-view?
It's possible, and the result could be a boon for the adult industry if it allows access to more titles.
"IPTV has the capability to turn the video-distribution market on its head in a similar manner to what technologies like iTunes have done for the music industry," Imbres said. "The real winner is the smaller publishers that have been kept out of the major distribution networks."
Not everyone shares such a rosy view about the future of IPTV, but even the grim view could be good for the adult industry. Phil Leigh, senior analyst with Inside Digital Media, thinks IPTV will reach an "evolutionary dead end" when broadband networks in the United States finally catch up with the speed of those in Europe and Asia, At that point, he said, customers will go directly onto the Internet through their televisions without needing the help of intermediaries like DirecTV, Time Warner or AT&T.
There won't be a "walled prison for IPTV offerings" like there is now, Leigh said.
In other words, customers will have access to any Internet porn on their flat-screen high-definition TVs, and the money they pay will go directly to the adult companies that made it.
Producers and distributors still will have to cope with the glut of free and pirated porn online. But the adult industry is sure to like being able to keep the middleman where he belongs: in a three-way scene.
This story first appeared in the February 2008 issue of AVN Online magazine. To subscribe
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