That would be a big change. While I'm not a member now, I was only about a month ago and it was working then. They even have a page about it in the FAQs where they actually recommend what Download Managers they like:
On the added New Sites - I've actually see TBP go through pulses like that before - I'm guessing that the rate that new sites are added to their database is hardly random. Probably something brought it to their attention that they missed a bunch of this or that style of site. On the other hand, Humans are expert pattern recognizers so any apparent pattern will show up very fast - sometimes even if it isn't there (that's why it can be easy to see faces in tree bark or shapes in clouds).
While I don't actually browse for gay porn - I think the categorization of Gay Porn is already too segregated. If you look at nearly any Heterosexual or Lesbian (just to point out that by "Gay Porn" I mean Male/Male) that is listed on "The Best Porn" it has a main category and then two secondary categories. The gay sites have no secondary listings and are all stuck in the main "Gay Porn" category. Therefore if you are browsing any Niche other than "Gay Porn" you will never run across a Gay site - which is silliness in my opinion. Each site should get two secondary categories too.
With a quick glance at The Best Porn's "Gay Porn" category - I saw that some of the sites were standard DVD sites, others were solo models, and so on. Lumping them all together is a disservice to any users hunting for Gay Porn - I mean they have to sort through 1300 sites! When they might be looking for glamour photography or whatever. I think we can all read just fine and any experienced porn user will be able to recognize a gay porn site from a mile away, so there is no need to shove them off in some little corner by themselves.
So I guess I'm voting for the exact opposite, lol - Gay Porn is just as mainstream as Lesbian or Heterosexual porn, we should start treating it as such. An interesting coffee table book I have is "XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits" by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Gore Vidal. It features photos of 30 of the most influential porn-stars (according to the authors) photographed both clothed and nude, and many interviewed - quite a few of the stars are male gay porn stars - I'm just saying that Gay Porn is too large and too diverse to be ignored as a small fetish niche these days. If people want a color coding scheme, I guess that would be fine - or even make it an account setting - you can tell the site if you want to exclude certain niches (maybe you don't want to see BBW sites either, who knows? it would be your choice). So offer the users everything, and let them decided to look at what they want to.
I'm glad to hear your improving the download speeds - they aren't exceptionally slow, but for a site dedicated to perfection in every form - they were notable. For my ISP, download speeds in excess of 1MB/s is not uncommon - I've seen as high as 3MB/s - but I generally only receive 200~300KB/s via your servers. As always with the download speed estimates YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) - I post it because other users inevitably ask it - but with location and ISP differences it isn't always the most reliable estimate for all. Frankly, it is a very good sign that it is the primary fault I could come up with.
On the other hand, I do think it is important that people know they can't freeze frame the video and get a picture perfect shot in 1920x1080 resolution - I understand that Hollywood grade camera's are outrageously expensive, so as exceptional as the video is, it isn't Blu-Ray. I personally would recommend most users skip the HD file and go for the 960x540 file as most users don't have monitors with a high enough resolution for the HD, and the 960 file will consequently look sharper, be easier to download and easier on the rig. I would have included that in the review, but as usual I ran out of space.
I did forget to mention that you guys do have a wonderful support team that responded to an inquiry of mine within hours - that is always commendable. You have a wonderful site - I just wish you would experiment a bit with the content a bit more, get outside your safety zone and see what happens. As it is, it is a strange thing - I feel I can't rate it poorly at all - the content is exactly what it professes to be - but in essence, that is its own downfall. All of the mystery is gone and we know what will happen from the moment we press play. I'm not saying pornographic films need to have a deviously complex plot line, but leaving any variability in a scene to need to be an act-of-god, that makes for a bit of a sameness to it all. Perhaps I'm jaded or just peculiar, but I felt it necessary to address the issue.
Interesting - perhaps it was the time at which I was downloading that was a factor, more than their servers. Still, nobody should complain about their servers being slow, that's for sure, lol
If file size is an issue, the custom clips can definitely make sense. I guess my gut reaction is along the lines of why I only listen to full music albums rather than just the tracks I initially like - the artist took time to put together the album and choose which music plays after which, and you can often learn something from their choices. I'll admit I think a lot of porn isn't made as carefully as most music albums, but I think that should explain my generalized lack of interest in the custom clip idea.
Yeah, the automatic flash video on the front page is definitely annoying, especially if you forgot your speakers were on. It can scare the hell out of you.
One thing I wanted to point out though was that despite their collection being quite notably smaller than a number of their competitors - it is surprisingly diverse. They have a reasonable selection of the major studios and a ton of smaller studios and things you will probably never find on the likes of VideoBox - like John Thompson's Sex Box series straight from Germany. I was rather shocked to run across that in their collection. I would say that if you are a fan of niche porn, rather than mainstream, this is the choice site.
It'll be a long time before they can catch up with VideoBox's mainstream collection, but their off beat stuff is really their strong suit. That and their crazy hilarious editorial commentary on each and every scene. I do hope they make a coffee table book of that stuff one of these days.
Having used both VideoBox and American Vice extensively, I'm amazed by your comment that VideoBox has the better search engine. American Vice's search engine is astonishingly powerful and far more adjustable than VideoBox. While superficially they behave similarly, in the fact that each suggests you choose a category and narrow it down from there, the differences are very much in the details.
Firstly, American Vice has far more specific categories than VideoBox. Secondly, when refining a search, you can remove any category from the line-up without having to clear and start over. VideoBox works on the Crumb Trail method of each category selection is laid on top of the last, so if you want to remove the first selection, you must remove all. Thirdly, American Vice allows user keyword searches to be added to the search in the same way it treats categories. This way you can add "monkey" and then "France" to the refine the search and then even decide to remove "monkey". I will grant you that American Vice's search engine has a steep learning curve, but it is worth taking the time to master it as then you will find searching their database is much better than the competing DVD sites. The only caveat is that their engine doesn't allow exclusive category selections - only inclusive. This isn't a huge negative though because none of the sites I've seen have exclusive capacity. This would be the advantage of providing a classic Boolean search engine, but most people would never figure out how to use it...
The preview options you have a point about - the screen shots are always great, but flash is easier for previewing than WMV, no doubt. And Video Box's animated screen shots are nifty, if perhaps not always placed in a useful location in the scene.
However, I truly don't understand the appeal of Video Box's custom clip feature though. Why would one want to cut a video into little pieces? Generally we are trying to avoid segmented videos in preference to single, large files. That feature has always seemed like a waste to me.
hehe, that search engine is a beast! I love it - now if they can just make the filters able to switch to excluding categories too... Maybe in the future, their site talks about how they custom built engine :-)
Glad you liked the review :-) The commentary goes along way for making this site what it is, just browse through their catalog (since they are also a token site, everything is on display). I was ignoring the commentary at first glance but once you start reading them it really becomes addictive, lol
LOL, #1 Reviewer? Wow! Haha, that is quite the compliment though I'm sure the accuracy of it is debatable, lol Still, I can't say it doesn't put a little spring in my step :-)
Anyway, I gotta say, prior to this site I sort of felt all DVD sites were basically copies of each other. Hell some sites were just clones with only a different header graphic, see BrazzersBox as an example. So I used to keep a membership with the leader site just because it was cheap and easy. But these guys have managed to do something different within such a restrained niche, and that is really something of an achievement.
Glad you liked the review! I was genuinely blown away by their search engine - and as folks may know, I have a serious search engine obsession, so that is saying something, lol
Their DVD collection really is remarkably diverse, the fact that they can catalog 15 individual fetishes I think illustrates that pretty well. I was checking the previous reviews here and it seems they've tripled the size of their collection in a year, that ain't bad progress at all. 50 DVDs a month really should be enough to keep anyone entertained presuming the diversity remains catered too.
The Editorial picks and commentary were the unexpected bonus that really endeared me to this site. The picks genuinely haven't let me down so far; scenes with that honor always have something special that makes them memorable and that is saying a lot in current porn. The commentary though, god is that stuff funny, and so very tweaked most of the time, lol
Yeah, you really can't beat that year deal - I'm not one to usually recommend dropping a Benjamin on porn, but if you can honestly download their entire collection in under a year, at the rate they are adding DVDs, then you have too much time on your hands :-P
If you can list a con, it can't be a 100 - come on now. A little realism in the score would be nice.
How about telling us the number of models, videos and photo sets. Are the videos DRM protected? What are the dimensions of the vids and photos? Is the site easy to navigate, are all the models hot, or just some? Is it solo content, or g/g or b/g?
I understand that not everyone spends hours on their reviews, but a little effort would be appreciated.
They are definitely having some problems there, I tried logging into one of the other sites and then using their header bar control to log into Anime Movie Pass and it still passed me over to Flip 18. Very odd.
Not a huge loss though, the video quality of the DVD conversions suck and usually they don't put up the subtitled ones - just the crappy American dubbed versions.
Granted I was a member of this site about 5 months ago - so they should be considerably larger now, but at that time there were 30 videos and every video was downloadable as one part - average file size 500 MBs. I have 8.75 GB of the site's videos that have survived since my membership - so I recommend the site pretty highly. I just didn't continue the membership because the updated too damn slow. I'll probably rejoin in a few months and then quit again after I strip the site again, lol.
I just joined a few days ago - but I haven't really noticed that yet. I'm exploring the content still but there seems to be plenty of Bukkake for new users. I gotta say though, I tend to like a little variety or I'll get bored, so if they are mixing it up a little while still holding on to the bukkake trend a bit, I'll be happy. I could understand it upsetting purists though.
Yeah, ATK hasn't really ever done a network option, or even discounting for being a member to multiple sites. It's too bad because I like a number of their sites quite a bit and would be more inclined to sign up more frequently if there were more discounts.
ATK Natural & Hairy has also switched over to single, all-inclusive zip files too. It is a nice time saver, now if they would just name each zip set numerically rather than all the same name. Right now if a model's name is Jessica, the zip file is jessica_all.zip, no matter if it is a zip of her first set or her 30th set. Still, it is a big improvement, no doubt.
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