Porn, Travel Videos, TV Shows Coming To Your iPod?

From porn to video dating to travel videos to more TV shows, this is one prediction that did not take long to begin. The key is ‘standards.’

Apple controls the standard in iTunes, the iPod, and the QuickTime format, but cannot control the flood of video coming to your Mac or PC.

Don’t expect to be able to buy the latest Penthouse video on iTunes Music Store. Expect more TV shows. Expect travel videos. Expect video production studios to boom.

In short, expect video of all kinds to show up on iTMS and all over the web like never before. Why?

Two words. Standards, and standards.

Any new digital format that’s internet based needs standards for distribution. Among video standards and distributions there’s been a quagmire and no catalyst for growth.

Porn has done OK but isn’t and won’t be mainstream. There’s Windows Media Player and WMA, WMV, and DivX, and MPEG 2, and H.264, and MPEG 4, and Real, and Flash, and QuickTime. You get the idea. It’s a mess.

Worse, some of those file formats are so huge you need triple the average broadband speed to make downloading convenient. Until now.

iTunes Music Store has shown the world of content producers that you can create a seamless distribution system for music. Then podcasting. Then videos.

The circle is complete.

MacDailyNews is reporting that Penthouse and Playboy may make available adult movies and videos for the iPod format.

No, you probably won’t find the latest Playboy videos on the iTunes Music Store. But the viewing, purchasing, downloading, storing, playback process via iTunes, Mac or PC, and iPod is still a simple process.

iPodNN is reporting that ZoomAndGo will make their entire library of video clips available for iPods users.

How many is that? Approximately 10,000 high quality videos of popular travel destinations world wide. While most of these videos are not produced by professionals (travelers shoot the videos), it’s the start of the floodgate, lemming style.

Need more? CBS is negotiating with Apple to get some CBS video content available on the iTunes Music Store.

See? It’s the opening of a floodgate because there’s a standard for distribution. The video standard is QuickTime because it plays great on Mac or Windows PC. The distribution method is, of course, the internet, but the iTunes Music Store is the catalyst and focal point.

The ‘play’ standard is multi-fold: the iPod with video will sell in the millions over the next year, even at $299 and $399 a pop. iTunes and QuickTime become the ‘player’ of choice because everyone who has iTunes has QuickTime.

QuickTime is standard on all Macs. As part of iTunes for Windows users, QuickTime is included. I think of it as Apple’s little ‘Trojan horse’ for audio and video.

See what’s happening here? All the pieces are falling into place rapidly. Even more interesting, is that there’s probably not much the competition can do about it. Apple made sure that QuickTime was available to the gazillion iTunes users on Windows.

Now, as video content explodes on the scene, as America’s broadband usage soars beyond the 60-percent range, and both method of distribution and playback have standards, Apple wins big time.

Not just music. Apple is set to own a huge chunk of the video pie, too.

There’s another chunk of the pie that doesn’t have Apple’s finger stuck in it, and that’s the ‘Media Center’ slice carved off by Microsoft with the Windows Media Center PCs.

Apple’s Front Row can’t really be compared to the Media Center, so that area still requires Apple to close the circle (I’m thinking of an advancing army surrounding a larger foe on the battlefield).

Look for Macworld 2006 to be an event beyond introducing a few new Macs or an upgrade to iLife ‘06. Video is here. And Apple is leading the charge.