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Vivid launches sexually explicit channel on Google TV

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Vivid Entertainment is bringing porn to Google TV.

The Los Angeles adult entertainment company launched its Vivid for Google TV channel on Monday as ‘the first TV app designed to make sexually explicit content available through the new Google TV set-top device.’

Apple, one of Google’s biggest rivals, has had a long standing policy of not allowing adult content on products such as its Apple TV, iTunes or the App Store for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. However, Apple has made an exception for Playboy.

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Until this point, Google hasn’t has any adult channels on Google TV though users can surf anything on the web through Google TV’s built-in web browser.

Steven Hirsch, Vivid’s co-founder and co-chairman, said in a statement that the new Google TV channel is ‘a central part of our making Vivid available everywhere concept, which gives fans unified access to our content through their personal computers, mobile devices, tablets, television sets and DVD players.’

Vivid’s streaming channel will broadcast, in high definition ‘award-winning adult movies, celebrity sex tapes, XXX parodies of popular superheroes, educational videos and other content,’ to those ages 18 and older who also subscribe to the company’s website.

Hirsch also noted that Vivid is looking to bring similar content to other Internet TV platforms, although he didn’t name others.

‘We spent more than a year developing a code base for a robust, stand-alone Internet-TV channel with a friendly interface for the consumer that can be used with the current Google TV technology and other Internet protocol presentation methods now in development,’ he said.

Google TV has had a tough time catching on with consumers since its launch more than a year ago, and the online search giant is looking to reboot its efforts with a new platform based on its hugely successful Android operating system for phones and tablets.

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[Updated 12:44 p.m.: A Google spokesman emailed this statement to the Technology blog regarding sexually explicit video on Google TV:

We will respect the parental controls of devices connected to Google TV. So if you have controls set up through your set-top box or through a V-Chip, those controls will continue to work for TV content shown through Google TV. Users will also be able to implement Safe Search on the Google TV browser (Chrome), and the Safe Search setting will extend to Internet content shown in Google TV search results. In addition, users will have the ability to lock out access to the browser on Google TV through a 4-digit PIN code for access control.]

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

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