| Bottom Line: |
This is one of the better studio sites where I’ve had a membership, but since I find most studio sites lacking in some key areas that isn’t necessarily praise. This is a good site that offers solid value though.
You’ll note that I refer to this as a site while others consider it a network. The TBP review notes that a membership to the main site comes with ten sites in total. That’s sort of true, because those other ‘sites’ exist, but it is also misleading. The additional sites contain nothing different from what is on the main site. The additional sites are more like niche tags. If you sort by DVD and then open a DVD you’ll see that some of the scenes in the DVD are tagged with the watermarks of those bonus sites. While this may be useful for sorting a niche you like, no one should join expecting access to both Private and bonus sites offering additional and unique content.
Currently the site has 660 DVDs available. Unlike so many other studio sites it appears that Private hasn’t neglected to upload some scenes in DVDs. For those who know Private’s videos they don’t need an introduction, but for those not familiar with them, Private is a European studio (likely the oldest in the industry) known for high quality productions. The studio uses only the best looking models (mostly European but a few American A-listers too), has incredibly high production values and often shoots in exotic (and expensive) locations. Like so much of European porn, anal sex is frequent which may deter some members. If the site has a weak point, it isn’t the quality of the porn.
The site’s main weak point, as seems to be common with studio sites, is in the website execution. The site itself is simple, which in many cases is an advantage, but in this case more detail and options should be made available. For example, when sorting by DVD (my preference) the only option is to sort by popularity or title. There is no option to sort by upload date or HD versus SD content.
I’ll confess that I’ve become a bit of a ‘size queen’ in recent months: life is too short for low res porn. The result is that unless there is a specific scene that I really want, I won’t download anything less than 720p. On this site, that meant leaving a lot of porn on the table. (I can’t really say how much HD is available because there is no way that I can find to sort for it, but I estimate that maybe 40% is available as HD.) Given that some of the DVDs available here were filmed prior to HD I can’t fault the studio for this and I assume that all newly shot and uploaded DVDs will be available in HD.
Where only SD is available there is usually only one option of 720x480, though some come in at 720x540. The only file type offered is mp4. Many scenes also offer a lower-res version for mobile devices.
The HD scenes still only offer mp4 but there are more options for resolutions. Those are 480p, 720p, 1080p and mobile. I downloaded the 1080p and those came in at 1920x1080 at 4,100kb/s and 25fps. Interestingly (for a non-tech guy) the file sizes are much smaller than I’m used to seeing for scenes of this resolution. I don’t understand how they’re encoded, but the site really has struck a great balance between how the scenes look (they look great – clear and crisp) and the file size. I certainly appreciate their effort.
Scenes are also available for streaming in the same resolutions offered for downloads.
The site allows download managers and I had no issue with timeouts. I realize that some have reported being limited to five downloads at once, but since I only use a manager to queue up downloads for one-at-a-time download I had no issues. I was also able to continue navigating when downloading contrary to what some others have reported. Download speeds were up to normal standards but I did see speeds drop off on a few occasions. I usually saw 10+MB/s but it could drop as low as 3MB/s for short periods.
A couple of minor issues popped up in that on more than one occasion I went to download a scene and my download manager said I already had downloaded it. It appears that some of the links may lead to the wrong scene. Another relatively minor quibble is that on maybe a dozen or so of the scenes I downloaded the female talent was incorrectly listed. As this is the studio that shot the video I’d like to think they could avoid this mistake.
The bottom line for me is that this is a solid site that offers a lot of top-quality porn for a fair price. While the site could use more tags and search tools, and should continue to add HD content, even as it stands it offers great value for your porn dollars. |
