From X Biz – Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Ecstasy Mobile Touts ‘One Stop Shop’ For Mobile Content
By Jayson Romaine
XBiz – Ecstasy Mobile Touts ‘One Stop Shop’ For Mobile Content [photopress:ecstasymobile.jpg,full,alignright]
The latest mobile porn provider, Ecstasy Mobile, hopes to be streaming live 24-hours a day by the second quarter of 2006, banking both on the support of major stars, large studio partnerships and the company’s emphasis on keeping abreast of technology.Ecstasy Mobile officially launched in early January at the Adult Entertainment Expo. It was there that President Marvin Jones announced a series of contract negotiations, including deals with company partner Tawny Roberts and exclusive contract star Devon, as well as mobile content offerings from Jessica Jaymes, Briana Banks, Jenna Jameson, Sky Lopez and Tyra Banxxx, to name a few.
Like some of his competitors, Jones is looking to offer up Ecstasy Mobile as a “one stop shop†for adult mobile content. Studios can partner with the company to have their films hosted on branded channels, which can be made available both for direct download or, with a little extra work, to stream directly to mobile phones.
Using a proprietary compression technology, Jones said films hosted on the Ecstasy Mobile site can stream seamlessly to compatible phones, which is no small task in the U.S.’s comparatively low-bandwidth arena.
“There are some companies that actually do streaming video but they can only stream at four frames per second, which is not very clear,†Jones told XBiz. “The problem with being able to stream at higher rates is our bandwidth is very low here in the U.S., so you have to compress each individual frame, send it to a phone and use a special player that decodes and decompresses the video before it shows it.â€
Users download the player from Ecstasy Mobile the first time they access the site’s content, which Jones said only takes a couple of minutes. Once downloaded, Jones said the streaming video only needs a standard 10-15 second buffer before playing smoothly.
Jones knows that the U.S. phone market still has some catching up to do compared to much of the rest of the world when it comes to bandwidth. Realistically, the ability to view streaming video is an option for only about 40 percent of the phones in the U.S. market today, which is why Ecstasy Mobile also is developing download packages Jones hopes to market to studios that want to mobilize their content.
Using Ecstasy Mobile’s compression technology, Jones said he could fit four full-length movies on a standard 128MB phone memory card, which could then be branded and sold within a variety of formats.
“We can put companies in a situation where they put four of their films on a 128MB card and then when a consumer makes a purchase they can unlock the first film with a code,†Jones said. “Then, in order to get the next three films they have to call in a number, pay a certain amount, and then they get an additional code that lets them unlock the other films.â€
But Jones is not content to merely work with other people’s content. Ecstasy Mobile plans to produce its own films as well, beginning with the girl-girl feature, “Devon Loves Tawny,†which will air exclusively through the company’s mobile platform before being released on DVD.
“When you have a situation where you can provide exclusive content to the consumer that they can’t get elsewhere they are going to come to you,†Jones said. “We plan to release about two exclusive films a month, which will air on our mobile platform first before being distributed on DVD.â€
Aside from being able to download and stream video off the Ecstasy Mobile site, users can access photos, chat with stars, download ring tones and order branded content from the Ecstasy store.
“Right now we are signing a bunch of contract providers and getting our affiliate programs set up,†Jones said. “By next week we should have several niche categories up, along with some major library additions.â€