Apparently, a company offered VG a cool million for the opportunity to shoot the world's first space porn. That's more than the $200,000 they're charging per person for a flight, but it's unclear how the deal would have worked. Is that a million for the two actors, the director and the cameraperson? If so, that's not a very generous offer. If it's a million on top of four tickets, well, that's a bit more generous.

But still, I can't help feeling like that's a pretty low offer. Come on, Hefner. You can swing more than that, can't you? In the name of science? I'm sure Virgin Galactic is a dignified company and everything, but everyone has their price. Let's make this happen. [The Inquirer]

So we ask you, dear techie readers, what is the next technological breakthrough that changes the face of adult entertainment?

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It's also worth noting there's nothing new about passengers viewing offensive materials during a flight. Said Tim Smith, a spokesman for AA, "Customers viewing inappropriate material on board a flight is not a new scenario for our crews, who have always managed this issue with great success.''

So let's throw this out to the community today. Is porn on planes a problem for you? Should flight attendants have to become "moral policeman," as they fear they will become in the Bloomberg article? Should people who can't go without porn or violent imagery for the duration of a five-hour flight really be allowed to go on airplanes to begin with? By all means, dish. Just keep it, ah, clean. [Bloomberg via Wired]

The IE 8 Beta 2 release should be hitting any day now, so we shall see soon enough whether or not this feature made it into the build. But, the question is, would private browsing make IE more appealing to you, or is it a non-issue? [istartedsomething via ZDNet Image via ninamariebarbuto]

Assemblyman Charles Calderon argued that people who make or watch it should pays for its "harms." Happily, his proposal just died in committee. It does raise an interesting question though, since it could obviously only tax actual transactions: How many of you DO pay for porn? [The Blowfish Blog via Valleywag]

One, Vudu's AVN channel will offer high-def porn—FyreTV is only DVD-quality, at best. (Merits of HD vs. SD porn aside, at least Vudu can deliver either HD if you want it.) Second, a Vudu box is way more discreet (though its remote does kind of look like a sex toy). And besides, if you already have Vudu, it's one less box you have to deal with. [CE Pro - Thanks Julie!]

Even over 3G and not Wi-Fi, the video quality was remarkably good for something you're watching streamed live. You can seek to any part of the movie using the default iPhone movie playback controls—just like the kind you see in any embedded Quicktime movie. Audio quality was good and the 200 movies gives you a fairly ample selection that will only grow as the site matures. For $9.95, it's a pretty damn good deal if you're a frequent traveler or if you need to hide your habit from your wife. "Favorites" support even helps you get to your preferred scenes as quickly as humanly possible.

In our opinion, it's probably the easiest way to get porn on your iPhone without loading it up in iTunes beforehand. [iRoticNET]

Apparently, Bhutanese politicians are addicted to computer gaming and "pictures," whatever that may be. They have protested, arguing that laptops are more convenient than carrying around bundles of papers, but they would have to go back to the porn mags and real poker cards. [Reuters via South Asia Biz]

According to the search company's statistics, there has been a sharp increase in "iPhone porn" searches over the last year, showing either that iPhone users are all a bunch of pervs, or that Jason and I spend way too much time surfing the web in the bathroom. Probably both.

Apple says that they won't allow any adult-oriented applications in the iPhone app store—so goodbye to your interactive anime porn games through iTunes, hello to Installer.app—but the 3G speeds and the Safari browser is open to any kind of content. The new version of Safari, however, will include parental contents so only daddy and mommy can surf the pink flesh wave. [TIME]

Hi Jason,

Are you looking for a safe place to store your adult DVD collection?

Dude, it's like you're staring right into my soul!

Disc Makers has you covered with the Disc Manager 100. The Disc Manager 100 allows users to store and password protect certain DVDs owners may prefer to keep private.

Mark would find this useful.

The Disc Manager 100 and its bundled software makes it easy to locate any file and eject the appropriate disc in seconds. It also protects your CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs from damage caused by improper handling, exposure to dust, and UV light.

No one wants dust on and/or improper handling of their adult DVDs.

Users can stack up to five Disc Managers 100s - allowing parents to manage a 500 disc library with just one USB connection.

Whoa, whoa. You didn't say anything about letting my parents handle my adult DVD collection before.

...OK I'm sold. [Disc Makers]

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The films, with titles such as Glass Dreams, Private Werner's Big Surprise and F***ing for the Fatherland, were made on 12mm cameras. Initially, a dozen men were involved, but by the mid-'80s, there were 160 people in the know. Soldiers were measured up to see if they were well-enough endowed for a starring role in the films, which were short and shoddy.

Former soldeier Dietmar Schuertze, now a media spokesman for the Bundeswehr, worked as both actor and sound assistant on the movies. "They were made, essentially, in secret but nothing got done in that man's army without the approval of the brass," he said, adding that they were made for the ruling classes' consumption. Filming often took place at garden parties, with officers and party officials checking the action out.

Some of the less salacious moments were shown on German TV earlier this week, but the quarter-century-old movies were incredibly dated. "I didn't recognize myself," said one former soldier. "And neither, thank God, did my wife." [Telegraph]

You've already seen the details. The FyreTV streams you DVD-quality adult IPTV from major studios, letting you enjoy content without having to store it locally. You've got three packages to subscribe with beyond the mandatory $9.99 monthly fee that gives you a certain bucket of minutes.

• Buying more on-demand minutes to use as you watch, which will be somewhere between $0.17 to $0.24 a minute.
• Buying a specific movie to get unlimited viewing.
• Buying a monthly pass to get unlimited access (for that month) to a specific studio's content, which gives you all the movies in their catalog. This will be somewhere around $24ish, depending on the studio.

The box performance was great. DVD quality video was good on the cheap Vizio set they were demoing it on. The remote control was super responsive, and when you queue up a video it streams incredibly fast (probably because of their setup on the floor, so we'll have to see how it performs in the real world when we do a hands-on at home).

Other great functionality include bookmarking, favorites, playback history, playlists, scene ranking (1 to 5 stars), combination tag searches (Blondes, Boobs, Blondes + Big Boobs were the ones we used) and easy fast forward/rewinding through scenes.

FyreTV's best news is that their box will have no stickers (as shown in the pictures) or markings on it, so you can hide it in plain sight next to your DVR and have your in-laws be none the wiser. Why watch porn on your little computer monitor when you can watch it on a 150-inch HDTV in your living room? Oh and if you've read this far, it means you're definitely interested in this thing. We're going to have a special code soon for Gizmodo readers that will get you into the expanded beta (they went from 5,000 to 10,000 beta units) ahead of everyone else. [FyreTV]

Photo credit: FyreTV

• American Airlines and Alaskan Airlines are saying ix-nay to Ype-Skay, but say there's no plan to lock out the nudie sites. The head of Aircell, which is wiring up these planes, cited a likelihood that "decency and good sense and normal behavior" will guide people's surfing decisions.

• Virgin America is considering a Skype ban. Virgin's director of in-flight entertainment cited concerns about passengers "yapping away or playing on a boom box." (Boom box? WTF?) Virgin will give parents the opportunity to control their kids net access, and may limit large downloads.

• Australia's Qantas Airways is testing high-speed net access by Panasonic Avionics Corp., which plans to block sites from "an objectionable list," including sites that feature porn or violence. (Note to grammar nuts: we're pretty sure they mean the sites are objectionable, not the list itself.) They may block Skype calls on the PC, but not on Wi-Fi handsets, which demand less bandwidth. Panasonic says that airlines could block incoming calls—and annoying ringtones.

• Air France is going to wait and see about its OnAir system for cellphone calls, setting up rules only after complaints start coming in. How laissez-faire!

The AP story also raises an important legal question: If you hack a website or engage in some RIAA-hatin' file swapping on a flight between New York and Nova Scotia, which country's laws apply? [AP; source image]

Previously, Digital Playground and other porny companies avoided Blu-ray because it's more expensive to produce for and because the Blu-ray camp had its sensibilities offended by the naughty nature of the content. Apparently they got over it when they woke up and realized how much money porn makes, and with the format war far from being over, the porn industry, a big fan of money, decided to just put material out on both. Now both camps can enjoy bruises and razor burn in beautiful 1080p high definition. [CE Pro]

On an entirely unrelated, lighter note, Gizmodo is naming today National Make Space On Your Hard Drive Day. Because one can never have too many free gigabytes on the old computer. For Word documents. And MP3 files. No siree Bob. [chicagosuntimes via dvorakuncensored]

A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters.

Having been on a three-week waiting list for Time Warner Cable's HighDef DVR box, it was finally installed yesterday. I turned it on and saw that it worked great. I leave to run the weekend errands and give my wife the remote control and the manual to set up her programs for recording. My wife and my two nieces (ages 3 and 8) sit down to learn how to record DisneyTV shows. My wife pushes the green LIST button on the remote control and up comes the previous owner's recorded content; 20 percent full of all adult content. As my wife tries to figure out how to get out of the menu mode, Hole Diggers—Part 2 starts playing.

Your New Time Warner DVR Comes With Porn! [Consumerist]

Ron Jeremy Videos (SFW, for the most part) [Heavy.com]
Ron Jeremy: Porn king turns tech reviewer [News.com]

Our horny brother Fleshbot enthuses:

The samples aren't quite as generous as we'd like, but what you can see is a cool blend of sexy, artsy, and naughty photos that demonstrate the beauty of what a good mix tape can do. Just make sure your battery is fully charged, because you do not want to run out of juice in the middle of your favorite, um... song.

Oh, and of course this whole affair is NSFW. – Jason Chen

MadameXpod [NSFW via Fleshbot]

Scope this ad, found in a shop in Akihabara, saying "Vista Aero function is not possible on XP". Of course, Aero is a pun for "ero", or "erotic", something Ashcraft had to explain to me between swigs of sake and bites of a turkey and cheese sandwich (don't ask).

But is it helping sales? Not even in Japan. – Jason Chen

Akibablog [via Kotaku]

Microsoft Should Have Protected My Porn Stash [Inquirer]

According to Christian anti-porn website theporntalk.com, that's exactly the case. Just because it can access the Internet, it deserves a warning and some overwrought hand-wringing. Look out for their next breakthrough announcement: "Phones: Portals to Swear Words." –Adam Frucci

The Porn Talk [via Kotaku]

So yeah, if you're into this sort of thing—we mean, who isn't—then you can safely see that Vista handles NINE different hentai games simultaneously. You can even use Flip3D to toggle between them. Hell, you can even control each one's volume independently. Sugoii!

– Jason Chen

Livedoor [via Kotaku]

Blu-Ray "PornGate" Ends with the Return of 'Debbie Does Dallas' [High-Def Digest]

Thanks to their crack team of xxxperts, the NYT has discovered that not all porn actresses are for HD. Stormy Daniels says "I'm not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD." In fact, just like Hollywood, the porn industry has to go and get cosmetic surgery to hide their "newly visible" imperfections.

What do you think? Do you really need to see these starlets in all their 1080p glory?

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– Jason Chen

In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real [NYTimes via Fleshbot]

Of course, the adult industry could find another Blu-ray disc manufacturer to step up and make their discs, but they seem to be going the HD DVD route instead. However, HD DVD's not running out into the streets yelling, "Look at us! If you want next-gen porn, come here!" – Jason Chen

Sony says no to porn on Blu-ray Disc [Computerworld via Crunchgear]

However, the story's not quite so simple.

Sony, as a company, refuses to "replicate" adult titles on any format. That means Sony won't be using their factories or facilities to make DVDs, UMDs, or Blu-ray discs full of porn. This isn't new. However, the Blu-ray alliance isn't against adult titles. At least in principle.

Marty Gordon, Vice Chair of BDA US Promotions Committee says:

There is not a prohibition against adult content. The BDA is an open organization that welcomes the participation of all companies interested in using and supporting the format, including those that represent the full spectrum of genres in the content industry. Blu-ray's superior capacity has attracted support from virtually every major Hollywood studio and gives content providers the best possible platform for delivering their content in high definition. We look forward to working any content providers interested in providing their audience with best possible high definition home entertainment experience.

So even though Sony won't do it, there's technically nothing stopping any other BD manufacturer from making Joone's discs or any one else's discs. So is Joone lying? Maybe, maybe not. It could be that all the BD replicators he's talked to has refused to make his discs (there could be a limited number of them?), so he was forced to turn to HD DVD.

Point is, the picture isn't quite as clear as we thought before. Next-gen porn is just getting started. – Jason Chen