News items: HD-DVD, Porn Industry Leadership, AT&T/Akimbo, Video PCs

- How do you know if you're a pathological early adopter? You were in line yesterday to buy a Toshiba HD-DVD player and one of the three movies available for it (`Serenity,' `The Last Samurai,' and `Phantom of the Opera').

- The LA Times observes that the porn industry often deploys new technologies that later get adopted by the mainstream media players. In this case, they cite movies purchased and downloaded from the Net that can be burned onto a DVD. (A hard drive, after all, can only store so many movies.) Claire Hoffman and Dawn Chmielewski write:

Hollywood has resisted burnable discs that can be watched on televisions because they fear piracy. It also doesn't want to alienate retailers, which sell most of its DVDs. But if history is any guide, the online experiment by adult entertainment giant Vivid Entertainment Group will be watched closely by mainstream studio chiefs.



"The simple fact is porn is an early adopter of new media," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. "If you're trying to get something established … you're going to privately and secretly hope and pray that the porn industry likes your medium."



Los Angeles-based Vivid will start selling burnable movies May 8 through online movie service CinemaNow. Marina del Rey-based CinemaNow last fall launched an adult service that it uses to experiment with features that might eventually become mainstream — such as pay-per-minute movie rentals and the ability to save favorite scenes.



Vivid, producer of such titles as "Bad Wives" and "Generation Sex," will offer 30 downloadable videos for about $19.95 apiece that include everything that is on a standard DVD — cover art, scene navigation, bonus material and deleted scenes. The finished disc will be copy-protected to deter piracy.

- AT&T and Akimbo have just created a partnership, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal "involves more than 10,000 television on-demand programs and movies, in a boost for the phone company's plan to offer on-demand video service to millions of consumers." Peter Grant continues, "The Akimbo on-demand content, assembled from 165 different programming owners varying from the BBC to the History Channel, will be part of the on-demand video service offered by AT&T's venture with EchoStar Communications Corp., known as Homezone."

- Finally, the Journal says that consumers are buying more powerful and capacious PCs to support video viewing. Carmen Fleetwood writes, "The growing availability of video content online isn't expected to boost PC sales in the near term but could alter the mix of machines sold over time as consumers may decide to purchase more high-end and laptop models to take advantage of the available content."