LAS VEGAS - Although VCX is known for such '70s porn classics as The Devil in Miss Jones and Debbie Does Dallas, the label is looking to the future with two new content delivery systems.
This month, company president David Sutton closed two deals designed to bring the bell-bottomed sleaze of yesteryear into the future of cutting-edge technology. Through Mara Epstein of AdultVest, VCX has now connected with FyreTV, an emerging IPTV provider. On his own, Sutton set up a deal with Vividas, a software company that offers instantaneous online video downloads through a full-screen, Java-based application.
"We’re taking ten of our top titles and encoding them for use with this Vividas player," Sutton told AVN. "The download speeds are absolutely instantaneous; you can rewind and start at any place in the movie you want. We're rolling this out on a trial basis this Wednesday on VCXLive.com. We've had the domain for a while; we reserved it for this purpose. Eventually, we'll start offering it on VCX.com."
According to Sutton, FYreTV will be conducting a small beta test of its IPTV set-top box next month. The company demonstrated the device at the recent Internext show with impressive results.
"I’ll be getting a box, as will some other content providers and tech guys with FyreTV " he said. "We're all going to be giving our feedback. The box hooks up to DSL, and the television is given an IP address,It’s a streaming deal like broadcast television; everything is real time, and it’s amazing. It plays on a television on demand, as if through a Tivo player or DVD. I don't know what this technology will be like two years from now, but right now, subscribers will be given a converter like a DirecTV box, except a DSL cable will plug into it rather than a coaxial or satellite cable. I think it’s going to be absolutely huge."
The ten VCX movies featured in the initial Vividas trial include Debbie and Devil, Anthony Spinelli's Sex World, the uncut versions of Little Girls Blue 1 & 2, A Dirty Western, and all four parts of Henri Pachard's Taboo American Style miniseries.
The company's IPTV package for Fyre TV includes all of the above-listed films with the exception of Taboo: American Style - plus Expensive Tastes, Fantasy, Frat House, Inside Desiree Cousteau, Sex Boat, Teenage Twins, The Dancers and a surefire hit for MILF aficionados: The Very Best of Kay Parker.
Sutton spoke to AVN about his strategy for releasing catalog titles via IPTV and online delivery platforms.
"It’s critical here, as in the VOD space, not to dump your entire library out there," he said. "You need to keep a small percentage of stuff going in, so it stays fresh in the system. As it becomes available, people are more inclined to want to look at it. And that way, it doesn’t take away from the retail DVD market. This situation is similar to the old Playboy TV sales; we used to make deals to play our top movies four times a year with Playboy, because if you start playing them all the time, it becomes a repeat."We’re still primarily a DVD company, even though other markets are getting larger with respect to the classic titles that we own," Sutton added. "We have to make sure we keep value in DVDs for distributors that sell into the brick and mortar stores. Granted, the online sales are not coming from the same customer base, but if you make everything available everywhere, it’s bound to take away something, somewhere. With AEBN and HotMovies.com, we’d give them ten movies every couple of months, so by the time we had everything in the system we had gotten a lot of publicity - 'new to VOD! new to download!' – and we’re going to continue to do that with the IPTV model. Depending on the success of this venture, we’ll see what the velocity is for putting new titles into the system."
