Porn Stars Shine in Sin City

Every year as the world's largest gadget show cools off, the exhibition hall merely feet away heats up with the combined power of porn purveyors, the starlets they feature and the lustful gazes of the fans that line up to see them at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

Half Renaissance fair (read: a lot of bizarre costumes and exposed cleavage), half sex shop on steroids, the show attracted seemingly thousands of men Thursday, just 30 minutes after the doors opened. As the distinct scent of marijuana smoke wafted through the air, fans mingled with industry veterans, lining up for photos and autographs in a snakey maze of giant booths devoted to the lucrative art of selling sex — or at least sexual fantasy.

The annual fan show precedes an awards show on Saturday for the adult entertainment industry in Las Vegas.

But the Consumer Electronics Show and the expo don't just share convention space, they also share a similar audience — one that is young and male. CES attendees lined the show's entranceway with cameras in hand, hoping to catch a shot of the bevy of scantily clad women who passed. At the same time, security guards pushed away voyeurs who got too close or lingered too long.

In addition to audience, the two shows also share a desire to push technological boundaries.

"It's fascinating some of the technology they've got. People don't realize the kind of work that goes into that space," said Rob Enderle, a technology analyst at the Enderle Group, in a phone interview. "They probably have some of the most advanced work in virtual reality."

One company that's taking a mainstream technology trend and applying it to adult entertainment is FyreTV.com.

This month, FyreTV will offer a set-top box that, like Vudu, will offer thousands of different movies. The difference is that instead of offering mainstream entertainment, the FyreTV box features porn.

"It started out of necessity," said the company's founder, Estefano Isaias. "We noticed that this market had not been exploited yet and we wanted to get in and be the first guys in there with a good product."

The company's set-top box features more than 20,000 titles that are searchable by star, genre and title. Payment models include monthly payments for a certain amount of minutes or payment per movie. Movies can be watched for the lifetime of the box.

Though still an emerging technology, companies are looking to set-top boxes more and more as a means to distribute entertainment. Earlier this month, LG announced that it would produce a box that would stream Netflix movies.