Just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah (or whatever winter holiday you celebrate) to everyone.
I’ll be back to my normal posting schedule after January first. In the meantime there’ll be a few posts here and there, but it’s all just filler until I start posting my AVN 2009 coverage. Should be fun.
Because almost 200 people expressed interest in a VideoBox blog Twitter feed, I’ve set up an account and will begin twittering (or tweeting or whatever the proper word is) as of today.
You can find me at http://twitter.com/AlisonVB.
Unless something particularly interesting happens at the office, I promise not to post the minutiae of the day. Rather, smaller items (probably links) that I don’t feel warrant an entire blog post of their own.
Be warned, much like the VideoBox blog, you should assume that any links I post are not safe for work. I don’t want anyone getting fired, even if 25% of people are looking at porn at work these days.
Update: We are officially out of shirts.
We have had a few t-shirts left over from a convention in Amsterdam this year (10 to be exact) and I’d like to offer them to the first ten people to respond in the comments of this post. There are 5 XLs and 5 XXLs, but they’re American Apparel shirts and sizes tend to run small.
So, if you’d like one of these snazzy shirts (I wear mine all the time), post your size preference (XL or XXL) in the comments section. Be sure to use your real email address in the form so I can contact you to get your mailing address.
Here’s what they look like:
Click the image for a larger view
Update: We are officially out of shirts.
The nominees for the 2009 AVN Awards were published last week and I’m very proud to announce that VideoBox has been nominated for Best Adult Website!
This is the first time we’ve been nominated for an AVN award and everyone here is very happy. The AVN website says that the judging “will be based on content quality, quantity and originality, site design, usability and features.”
I think we do well on most of those criteria, but I’m probably biased. I guess we’ll see if the judges agree with me next month. The award show is happening on January 10th at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.
This post is to let you know that the site will be going into maintenance mode for approximately 90 minutes at some point in the next 2 days. This outage is currently scheduled for 1:00 pm PST. It may be delayed, so check the blog for any updates to this schedule.
Update: The outage will not happen at 1:00 pm as planned. We will know within 90 minutes whether it will happen today or tomorrow.
Update: The outage has been rescheduled for Friday at 10:00 am PST.
Final Update: The outage will begin at approximately 11:00 am PST today.
VideoBox releases 5 DVDs a day (at 12:12, 5:00, 9:48, 2:36 and 7:24, PST at the moment). On Saturday, November 1st, we’ll be uploading an extra DVD because of daylight saving time.
The schedule will be: one at 12:12, 4:00, 8:48, 1:36, 6:24 and 11:12. It will also push the release schedule back one hour going forward (until it’s time to spring ahead).
Enjoy!
Greetings, fellow watchers of porn. I know what you’re thinking. “I can play porn on my home PC. I can play porn on my PSP. I can play porn on my ipod, iphone, AppleTV, XBox and PS3. But what about my shiny new Google phone?”
I have good news for all you gadgeteers out there. Our “ipod” format content plays beautifully on your T-Mobile G1 (aka Google Phone). Specific details about the platform are sketchy at best (despite us having one in-house to play around with, T-Mobile/HTC has released very few details about the playback capabilities). From our experimentation, it appears the device is capable of playing baseline-encoded H264 with low-complexity AAC audio at a maximum resolution of 480×352. The bitrate constraint of this version of H264 is ~1mbps, though this is likely not a limitation of the device.
From what I can tell, there are very few arbitrary playback limitations, unlike the iphone/ipod (video must be recoded in a very precise manner to have any chance of playing back on an Apple device - this device is much more flexible). What this means to you is the video playback capabilities are very likely to improve with future firmware releases, since playback is more dependent on software than decoding hardware (as opposed to the iphone, which uses a hardware-based h264 decoder, which is faster but less flexible), which I suspect will come out at a fairly regular clip through the first year of availability.
May the pr0n be with you.
On October 20, 2007, I put up the very first post on the VideoBox Blog.
It’s been a great year and I just want to say thanks. This blog is really fun to write because it has such a smart, engaged readership and I’m very grateful to all of you. Here’s to another awesome year!
I’ll be heading off for a 2-1/2 week vacation tomorrow, but I wanted everyone to know that I have a couple of posts lined up for you while I’m gone. I don’t want to give anything away, but I think you’re going to like them.
Additionally, I’ve given our friend Ropeadope the keys to the castle, so to speak, so keep an eye out for any posts he might decide to write while I’m gone.
I’m sure many of you have already noticed that the new Flash player went live this week. I just wanted to open the comments for any feedback you guys have on it. It’s really important to us that 1) you like it and 2) it works correctly. So post your thoughts, positive, negative or mixed in the comments.
We’ll be debuting our redesigned Flash player within the next week or so on VideoBox and I’ve got a preview of the design and functionality exclusively for blog readers.
The Design
A little sleeker and easier on the eyes, the new design tightens up the player a bit while delivering all of the features you’ve come to expect from it.
Click for larger image
What’s New
The new player also comes with a few changes:
I’m interested to hear what you guys think about the new design. Now and after it launches.
As some of you have probably noticed, the site is quickly approaching its 5,000th update. The big post goes up Thursday at 2:36pm PST. We’ve been planning this for a while and you’re in for a surprise. Can you feel the excitement?!
We just signed a deal today for a ton of new movies from Ethnicity Films, Fusxion and Loaded Digital. Just a few of the movies we’ll be getting are:
Look for the poll to decide which goes first in a couple of weeks!
We’re on our 3rd CDN trial, again as noted this is focused on improving the site image load performance time. As usual testing was done before flipping the switch on. Our particular interest is if European users are seeing faster page loading time with this feature. Please comment with your feedback.
Per the last trial, we have for some time now implemented a number of well-known tricks to optimize image delivery. This includes spreading the load between four hostnames, as mentioned by commenter dweazy - along with proper cache HTTP response headers, stripping JPG metadata comments.
Next week, Alison will be posting a poll to determine who is the membership’s least favorite male performer. The guy who annoys you the most. The individual you dread seeing with your favorite female performer. I have compiled a list of stars whom I’ve seen complaints registered against in the review comments. Am I missing any obvious nominees? This is the list I have thus far (which will be whittled down to more manageable levels for the actual poll): Please leave a reply if you note any glaring omissions.
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Logging onto the site Saturday night to check the latest update, we’re greeted by the alluring face and body of the lovely Sativa Rose. She’s gracing the cover of First Date from the site’s hot new studio - DVSX. Surrounding Sativa on the cover are Kat, Jessica Sweet, and Brodi(e). We note there are six scenes on the DVD as Trista Post and Trinity Post are also on board. You immediately say to yourself, let me get at that Sativa scene. However, there is a problem.
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For the past month, I’ve had the pleasure of beta testing a small VideoBox add-on program that is designed to block selected member comments from the movie review section. This application represents the latest response from the site to satisfy subscriber requests. Let’s take a brief look at the program, which is expected to be made available to the full membership within the next several weeks.
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Dear Euro Lovers,
Your requests have been heard. I’m very happy to announce that we’ve signed a deal with Private to begin offering a selection of their movies on VideoBox!
Private is known for hot Euro girls, beautiful locations and crazy features. We got a little of everything, so here’s a small sample of what you can expect in the coming months:
Click the box covers to get a look at the cast and descriptions for the movies.
Today we’re launching SSL or HTTPS support for a number of pages on the site. This includes the login page, change password form and other user specific sections. You’re probably familiar with “lock” or secure icon in the bottom window of your browser. This form of surfing means the data transmitted is encrypted from your source computer all the way to our destination web servers. Thus folks in your office, dorm or other environments can’t “sniff” your login information. This is a great value if you’re browsing on unsecured WiFi or other shared networks.
For clarification, our billing partners have always received your credit card billing information in this fashion. Extensive testing has been done for the past few weeks to minimize problems. As always, please escalate any issues via the tech support request form.
P.S. I’m sure the uber geeks will point out that HTTPS doesn’t prevent MITM or Man-in-the-middle attacks are still possible. You pervs!
You may have noticed last week’s posting spree stopped pretty abruptly. I apologize for that. I unexpectedly had to make a trip back east and didn’t have much time for blogging. Thankfully, everyone else was still here working hard while I was gone. Especially Content Dude, who just signed an exclusive deal to get DVSX videos on VideoBox!
Check out the trailers for a couple of the movies we’ll be posting in a couple weeks:
Fine Ass Bitches 4
Starring: Eva Angelina, Cassie Young, Samantha Ryan, Michelle Maylene, Candy Manson and Kelsey Michaels
Off the Rack 6
Starring: Ana Nova, Candy Manson, Devon Lee, Shannon Kelly, Shi Reeves and Carly Kaleb
Teen Sensations 13
Starring: Michelle Sweet, Faith Leon, Sandra Kalerman, Ginger Taylor, Vanessa and Alisson
I’m pretty excited about this deal. DVSX has solid content with a lot of really great girls. What do you guys think?
