Even with the mainstream slow to adopt new technology, one has to wonder if it watches the adult industry for what the next step in home entertainment could be. "If they aren’t, they damn well should be," says Jacobs. "The studios and the networks are still futzing around with downloading an episode of ’Lost’ to your iPod, whereas Vivid is now saying, ’Here, just burn a whole movie onto your computer for the price of a DVD.’"

Take Vivid, for example. While most Hollywood studios are freaking out about consumers burning DVDs and copying popular movies and television shows, the adult entertainment company last year decided to start letting customers download its movies and burn them to their own discs. Vivid teamed up with CinemaNow to launch All Adult Channel last spring; subscribers can log onto the site and watch pornographic movies on demand or download the movies to their computer for a limited time. All Adult Channel is similar to CinemaNow, which allows users to watch mainstream movies online or purchase the film and download it permanently to their PC.

"Debbie Does Dallas...Again," Vivid’s 2007 remake of the adult film classic, is one of the top-selling Burn to DVD titles on All Adult Channel.

However, Vivid made a splash with All Adult Channel when it announced that it would start allowing customers to download select titles and burn them to DVDs (previously, CinemaNow only allowed downloadable movies to be viewed on their PCs or Xbox 360s). Vivid initially launched with 30 titles available for roughly the same price as buying the DVD in a retail store and included the same DVD features, extra and interactive menus you’d get with the retail version; the only catch is, the movie files have a DRM system that allows customers to burn the DVD only one time.

Still, the burn-to-DVD feature seems to have worked well for Vivid and All Adult Channel. There are now more than 500 titles listed on the site’s burn-to- DVD section. CinemaNow also began offering burn-to-DVD titles, but there are only 12 titles offered and they are mostly older, more obscure Hollywood movies rather than popular blockbusters.

"We have conversations with people we know in the mainstream, and they’ve even gone so far as to call us up with something they’ve got that they think we’ll utilize more than they will," Asher said. "A new concept, a new camera, anything. We’re looking at whatever’s available at all times. More often than not we’ll try it and see how it sells, because that’s the ultimate test of a product."