The ubiquitous publication of many decades has launched its sexy array of beauties via Playboy.TV. Playboy’s evolution through time found them typically on the cutting edge of technology. They moved from a very successful hardcopy magazine (founded in 1953) to having success in both the satellite and videotape markets before finally moving to the internet.

It appears that Playboy are now positioning themselves for the next big step in internet advancement. That would be the condensing of media & communications signals into a single digital portal coming into the home or business. This will be a huge game changer and will become the equivalent of a nuclear war between countries. Except the war will be waged between large media conglomerates each vying to become your TV-phone-internet provider of choice.

There was a time when a family would subscribe to a hardline phone service (like AT&T), have dial-up internet, and maybe a separate cable company running a line into the house for cable television. Anyone with a home-based business might also have a separate phone service on top of all that. Times have changed though. For example, I know obtain all these services through one company, Time Warner. Multiple digital signals, multiple products, packaged as one service, and with only one bill. This is the future.

Playboy acquiring Playboy.TV is possibly one of the best moves they have made in recent times. .TV is the single best media web address on the internet for obvious reasons. To fully appreciate this move one must understand that web addresses will be the “channels” on that all encompassing single digital portal coming into your home.

In other words, Playboy.TV may well become the worldwide channel for their brand, and subscribers will pay for the channel à la carte. Imagine ordering your complete TV lineup direct from TV networks and programmers thus bypassing the traditional cable companies completely. The big winner here is the single portal digital access provider who will be bringing internet into your home and to all of your mobile internet devices. That is the holy grail of future media. And .TV may likely be at the very center of it all.

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A .TV auction concluded recently at online brokerage house, Sedo. Several notable sales of .tv web addresses included:

• Christmas.tv for $32,000
• Business.tv for $100,999
• Shows.tv for $20,500
• Learn.tv for $41,000
• Vacation.tv $14,000
• Fantasy.tv for $10,600

The .TV domain extension has been limited in its adoption for many years due to its registry not being clear enough with registrants on the exact plan for future renewal fees. The up front cost for acquiring premium .TV domains was relatively high and the renewal fees sometimes in the thousands of dollars per year.

This was largely rectified by Verisign with these newly purchased premium domains now being subject to only a nominal annual registration fee ($20 – $30 per year).

My favorite from the Sedo auction was Business.TV although all of the above keyword domain names qualify as premium choices in any top level domain extension. Business.com became one of the most impressive and interesting sales in domaining history, and inspired legions of domain investors to stake their claim in the new domain name frontier.

Robert DeMartinis (from Philadelphia) acquired the ultra premium domain name, Business.US, some years ago. This is a multi-million dollar internet domain name by any definition, and will one day make a tremendous asset acquisition for a U.S. based corporation.

Similarly, Business.TV has great potential for branding as a business-centric media portal. Currently, the domain’s whois is not yet reflecting the new registrant owner so it’s not possible to determine if the buyer is a private individual, a group of investors, or a single corporate level end-user.

The Sedo .TV auction was successful, and attracted a considerable number of buyers offering them a new opportunity to enter the field of domain name investing and development.

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