AEE Conference Places Spotlight on Technology

“Every Which Way; Technological Advances in Entertainment” was the ominous title of Friday’s informative conference at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. A broad subject, but AEE’s conference at the Sands Expo Center brought together a range of speakers with a range of opinions, and each panelist was more than willing to present, discuss and debate technologies’ advances on, and subsequent future in, the adult film industry.

It was difficult not to get flashbacks of “the great crossover,” film-to-VHS transfer of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that affected the adult film industry so profoundly. The discussions, the debates, the doubts, the resistance; it all seemed to be coming around again as speakers discussed adult entertainment’s future in things like high definition, DVD, video on demand, streaming and DVD burning. At least one other person in the room must have had that sort of technological evolution on their mind, because as Mark Friedler, the conference’s moderator, put it, “If you look at the switch from film to Beta, and then from Beta to VHS, a lot of the technological trends look to adult film as the trendsetter, and go from there.”

The first thing evolution needs is a fertile playground. There needs to be power somewhere before things can move forward, and with over 12 billion dollars in revenue last year, the adult industry just might be about as fertile as it gets.

“In terms of annual revenue, if video games were bigger than Hollywood in 2005, then the adult film industry is bigger than both of them.” This was Friedler’s opening statement. Friedler, by the way, runs GameDAILY, a provider of video game news, reviews and downloads. He went on to say that “since the adult industry produced an amazing 13,600 new titles last year alone, this puts it in a unique position for technological advances.”

First to speak on the subject was Christian Stumm of Kunaki, a manufacturer and distributor of DVDs. Stumm championed the relevancy of the DVD by saying that “99 percent of all media is still distributed in the DVD format. With us, the publisher simply designs and configures the product, and we give them the software to replicate it, and then distribute it for them. The time that it takes to get it out there is faster, and you can basically create a product in one day.”

Stumm’s stance about the relevancy of the DVD was at least slightly contested by Richard Cohen, owner of HotMovies.com, a site that delivers online, pay-per-minute access to 32,000 titles. “Most consumers don’t watch entire films, they just want to watch parts. There are always issues with taking the actual DVDs home … a person might be worried about their spouse or their kids seeing the packages. People don’t want to set foot in a video store, because of embarrassment.”

Stumm’s sentiments, at least on that point, seemed to be echoed by another panelist, Anh Tran. Tran runs Wantedlist.com, a company referred to by Wired magazine as “the Netflix of porn.” Tran made the point that Wantedlist.com is acting on a major buying principle for adult titles, and that is the users’ need for anonymity. “You can even go back to the old Pussycat theatres,” explained Tran. “Consumers of adult material have always been moved around by the prying eyes of society.”

Tran and Wantedlist.com have been taking advantage of what he calls “the next evolution of consumption” by making thousands of titles available for rental onlin, for the last four years. “We think accessing films this way will be very prevalent for at least the next five or six years.”

With Wantedlist.com, a consumer will not set foot in a store, but will still be receiving a physical DVD, and this is where Stumm and Tran parted ideological ways in terms of adult’s future. Stumm and HotMovies.com, meanwhile, have an online rival in Susan Keil and her company, Entice TV.

Keil works with what is referred to as IPTV, basically a connection from your television to your computer. “A user will be able to access adult videos, via broadband, on their television, all in true DVD quality,” said Keil. Keil and Entice TV seem to be yet another company pulling the movie industry in a different direction than its current, dominant technology, the DVD.

So will DVD go the way of Beta and VHS? Will everything move to the web? The panelist debated the relevancy of their respective technologies for awhile, but Keil might have said it best when she stated, “People in the stores are different from people on the web. The industry is expanding, not eating itself alive.”

Hang on for the ride, because it looks like the adult entertainment industry is truly going “every which way.”