Digital Playground (0)
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| Status: |
Was a member approx. 1 month prior to this review.
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| Pros: |
+Videos are high quality flash streams and available in low and high speed. Those videos which are widescreen are provided as such.
+Every digital playground movie is available, at least I think. See the note in the cons on the Rain Productions vids from pre-2003 (now under Digital Productions)
+Excellent job of tagging performers in DVD listing
+Pornstar directory with thumbnail headshots
+Every star has a page with headshot (problem is that videos are not linked on these pages)
+There is a site search, but you have to open a separate page to get to it (its not a nice little box on every page like you have with VideoBox for example). It does what it is supposed to do, but when you get video results for a girl you dont get pushed to the start time of the scene - this is because the streams do not have scene splits, they are full 1-2 hour streams with no breaks.
+Site has a little more value based on the fact that it offers all Jacks Teen America movies (available on a separate site) |
| Cons: |
-All videos are provided as streams and are provided WITHOUT scene splits. No downloads!!
-So confusing - there are two areas of movies. One area is the vids from Rain Productions (pre-2003) now under Digtial Productions umbrealla. All of these movies are SUPPOSED to be available as iPOD MP4 downloads but are all dead. The newer videos (2003-...) under "Digital Productions" are those provided as streams and meant to be a front to make you BUY the DVD. Annoying.
-Images are watermarked
-Image galleries not downloadable as ZIPs.
-The image viewer (the one that makes the rest of the browser window black while popping the image up on top of the page) shrinks the image by 25% or so. Make sure you right click images and open them in a new tab/window to get full size.
-Junky extras - trailers, BTS vids, and not-incl network sites
-Model pages fail to link movies, only image sets
-Members main page has video autoload (with audio) in background. It is REALLY annoying.
-Update schedule? |
| Bottom Line: |
After checking out Jacks Teen America and writing a bad review of that site, someone suggested I check out the parent site, DigitalPlayground. (Jack's Teen America is completely worthless, not only because it is a junk site, but because DigitalPlayground offers all the Jacks Teen America videos in higher (non Quicktime) quality). Well, I found DigitalPlayground to be as disappointing as Jack's Teen America. Yes, videos are higher quality (and non-Quicktime), and yes there is a larger library of videos thanks to the fact that the site doesn't just focus on one series (rather all content from the producer), but the site is just as bad and unenjoyable as Jack's Teen America, and it makes for a terrible experience.
The site is not as fast as I would like for a porn site, however this in no way affects the videos. All video streams ARE HOSTED BY AKAMAI, so they will all load instantaneously and allow you to jump to any part of the stream without delay. If streams are being hosted on another server then it goes to show you that the site itself is not being hosted on very capable hardware or a very capable connection.
Everything good about the site (the search, high quality, etc.) is stuff that you should come to expect about a porn site, everything bad is just glaringly bad (zip downloads for image galleries, no downloads, etc.) and fails to exceed expectations in other areas (i'm not going to say how I think sites should exceed expectations because exceeding expectations means I am not expecting it).
Everything is of course killed by the fact that all videos are provided as streams with no scene splits, with the site acting as a goad to get you to buy the DVDs. What a waste.
If you are the non-downloading type, then DigitalPlayground works well, sans the fact that you are limited to just DigitalPlayground material. They are supposed to offer downloads of old Rain Productions videos, problem is that they don't work, and you can probably find these same videos on sites like VideoBox or VideosZ because of how common they are (just goto to IAFD and get the Rain Productions list:[IAFD dot com domain removed by me to abide by rules]/distrib.rme/distrib=2220/Rain-Productions.htm). I think eventually sites like VideoBox and VideosZ will get their hands on the DigitalProductions material and will offer them as high quality split scene downloads, which will of course eliminate the need for this crappy site.
65 rating because you can't find Digital Productions' videos anywhere else, at least for now, and the videos are at least provided in enjoyable high quality streams on AKAMAI servers. |
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