Historically, the porn industry has adopted new technologies more nimbly than Hollywood. It embraced home video in the late 1970s, allowing people to bypass seedy theaters and watch the movies in their living rooms. Mainstream studios, by contrast, fought home video all the way to the Supreme Court before making it one of the most profitable pieces of their business.
In the same way, porn producers were among the first to recognize the potential of the Internet, offering streaming video long before high-speed Internet connections made it practical. This month, several major Hollywood studios agreed to sell movies online through CinemaNow and rival service Movielink. Although consumers can download and keep a copy of "King Kong," "Brokeback Mountain" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," the DVDs they make play only on computers.
The ability to deliver content over the Internet that can play in any DVD player is "the holy grail," said Richard Doherty of market research firm Envisioneering Group.
"Everybody wants to find something that sticks," he said. "We've got a billion devices ready to play these. Making it compatible with that, and the convenience of electronic delivery, is a proven, desired business model which should stick and grow."
All the major Hollywood studios contacted for this story declined to comment.
In addition to Vivid, other porn companies including Chatsworth-based Red Light District plan similar services. Michael H. Klien, president of LFP Internet Group, the online distribution arm for the publisher of Hustler magazine, said the company was interested but still evaluating the new DVD technology.
CinemaNow Chief Executive Curt Marvis declined to identify the makers of the technology used by the company, which is partly owned by Microsoft Corp. A spokesman for Microsoft, which powers many online video efforts, said that although the company marketed similar DVD-burning software, it was not involved in the Vivid deal.
"In a perfect world, it is a technology that could be accepted by traditional content providers," Marvis said. "They might be a bit slower to adopt it because they always are."
The Internet solves two of the porn industry's biggest challenges: distribution and privacy. Wal-Mart and Blockbuster Inc. won't sell porn. Nor do most customers relish the embarrassment of browsing in the back room of their local video store for porn.
