The Richter Scale^®

As mentioned in a prior blog entry, I’m always amazed at the innovative uses of new technology one finds in the adult industry, and this past month’s AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas was no exception.

For me, the best technology find was from Lurid HD. Lurid, as well as several other providers of adult content, delivers adult video in high definition by using WMV HD as their encoding format. There aren’t any standalone, non-PC WMV HD players out there, but certainly PCs equipped with the latest Microsoft Windows Media Player or Media Center Edition (MCE) software can play back WMV HD files.

Well, Lurid’s big splash at the show was to present their HD adult content on an Xbox 360. All of a sudden the Xbox 360 is now a HD player. See the image below.

Alas, it’s nothing as simple as just popping a CD or DVD with HD content into the Xbox 360’s DVD drive. Instead, the smart guys at Lurid figured out that the Media Center Extender software in the Xbox 360 can play back any video media that a master Windows XP Media Center Edition PC can play (and thus stream). So, they load the WMV HD content onto said PC, start up the Media Center server there, and then tell the Xbox 360 to fetch content from the MCE system. Voila, high definition video on the Xbox 360.

I’m sure Microsoft is not particularly thrilled by this use of their latest and greatest living room toy, but it sure is ingenious, isn’t it?

And wouldn’t it be nice if some mainstream movie studios tried a similar approach? But they won’t because of DRM issues and a general inability to rapidly adapt to new technology, which is one reason the adult industry innovators will probably always be on the bleeding edge.