Avert Your Eyes! High-Definition porn has arrived. Part I
Avert Your Eyes!High-definition porn has arrived. That’s bad news for HDTV.
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Monday, Feb. 2, 2004, at 5:52 PM ET
Anyone who caught yesterday’s Patriots triumph on a high-definition television can attest to the technology’s upside. An HDTV’s ultrasharp pictures are a boon when it comes to spying the precise contours of Joe Andruzzi’s gnarled fingers. But that degree of clarity isn’t necessarily a plus when watching less spontaneous fare. Viewers who think that, say, CSI star Eric Szmanda is a paragon of male perfection might not like the HDTV shock of realizing that—horrors!—the heartthrob sports layers of orange makeup, not to mention a dermatological blemish or two. If HDTV is sharp enough to reveal a G-rated entertainer’s humanity, the technology’s harsh gaze must be all the worse for those who make their livings in the nude. So when DirecTV announced last week that it would be broadcasting pay-per-view adult movies in HDTV, starting last night after the Super Bowl, one had to wonder whether the company’s decision-makers actually bothered to watch some samples. A big part of the allure of porn—at least the relatively highbrow variety that DirecTV shows—is that the participants appear to share few of our species’ physical foibles, thanks to clever lighting, makeup, and surgery. Your spouse may suffer from a dearth of gym time or the occasional bout of acne, but Kobe Thia’s on-screen personas are always in tip-top shape. (Caveat clicker: Kobe Tai’s home page is relatively tame, but it contains links to much raunchier sites.)
DirecTV is obviously familiar with porn’s track record as a driver of nascent technologies. The adult industry’s decision to embrace VHS in the early 1980s, for example, helped kill Sony’s Betamax, despite the latter format’s superior quality. The infant Internet grew quickly thanks to erotic chat rooms and bulletin boards to the chagrin of AOL, which sought to sell the online world as family-friendly. Since fewer than 6 percent of American living rooms boast HDTV sets and many of the most popular network shows (e.g., The Simple Life) still don’t use HD cameras, the industry understands that viewers need a nudge to join the revolution.
http://www.slate.com/id/2094788/