The company will launch its web and IPTV channels in the late summer. Subscriptions to PinkTV.com will allow users to access the studio’s original material via the website or from set-top boxes that currently retail for under $200. The IPTV boxes display web feeds on television screens and are configured with the same outputs – coaxial cable, RCA and S-Video – as many cable boxes or DVD players.
PinkTV is the brainchild of Dutch-born tech venture capitalist Jan Verleur, who told XBiz that his entry into the adult industry began when funding was pulled for a streaming video codec he was working on. The codec allowed for TV-quality broadcast at 640 x 480 resolution of content streamed at 400 kbps over the web.
Now in its Miami studio, PinkTV is planning to broadcast worldwide two years of content shot, as Verleur puts it, “under the radar.”
PinkTV will then launch in Europe by optical fiber line from Miami or its planned studio in Tijuana to the U.K., where it will be beamed to a satellite. The company is still waiting for its final licensure, called an Offcom, and must adhere to content restrictions of EU countries.
PinkTV’s planned Tijuana facility will make use of fiber lines used in Fox Studios’ massive infrastructure-building project for the production of 1997’s “Titanic.” “They already brought fiber line down there,” Verleur said, “and a lot of companies are taking advantage of available space along the fiber route. We can also access L.A.’s talent pool.”
The stateside web and IPTV releases, Verleur told XBiz, are test balloons. The European launch over various platforms will determine the eventual deployment of PinkTV’s American broadcast network.
“Because of competition, Europe is about four or five years ahead of the United States in broadcast technology,” Verleur said, giving the example of the “red button,” the interactive interface on European TV remotes that lets viewers order pizza from television commercials and get more interactive data, including multiple camera angles from live broadcasts, than satellite or cable subscribers in the United States.
“When we launch television in the United States (planned date: fall of 2006), we want to be on the cutting edge of technology, not backpedaling,” Verleur said. “American companies are still trying to get the most use out of old Scientific Atlanta [cable] boxes.”
PinkTV maintains 25 employees in a 25,000-square-foot facility in Miami and has been shooting content “under heavy nondisclosure agreements,” according to Verleur, for more than two years. “Finally we decided we were going to debut big,” he said, and last week’s Hollywood party for performer Lezley Zen was one of the first steps.
Zen has been tapped as one of PinkTV’s spokesmodels as well as the star of its interactive BDSM soap opera, “Into the Mist.” She also will host an adult game show on the channel.
Other PinkTV shows include “The Brothel,” a reality series based inside a European bordello and “Fucking TV,” a hardcore news program.
Last night’s event, organized by PinkTV with media company AllMediaPlay and Events Promoter Intoxicate U, celebrated Zen’s move to Miami to begin her hosting duties.
PinkTV also will be the largest exhibitor at this summer’s Internext in Ft. Lauderdale, Verleur said. “We’re going to have planes flying overhead, a media center and the biggest booth there.”
Citing Bill Gates for Microsoft’s pioneering work with IPTV as well as the Microsoft co-founder’s book “The Road Ahead,” Verleur said that the measured multimedia launches of PinkTV were in anticipation of a “convergence” that he predicts will happen within three or four years.
“We believe that computers and television will fully converge very shortly,” he said, “and we want to be there on all sides when it happens.”
