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Content
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| Quality : |
18.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
15.0 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
13.0 / 15 |
| Updates : |
9.5 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
4.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
2.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
62.0 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
2.5 / 05 |
| Design : |
4.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
13.5 / 20 |
| Other |
| Originality : |
3.5 / 05 |
| Hard Facts : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
6.5 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
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| Editor: Spencer |
Initial Review: 01-12-06 |
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1. Lots to see here.
2. Hopping between sites isn't too hard.
3. New stuff is up daily, though you gotta find it.
4. Quality can be quite good.
1. Some sections are lacking updates for months.
2. Navigation in general was difficult at best.
3. Long downloads across the board.
"A large collection of content here that's fun for sure, with just a few drawbacks." |
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Well with a name like Hentai Key, there's no real question as to what we'll be checking out today. It's an AVS type site (I'm never sure what to call them now anymore - AVS? AEN?) featuring all sorts of toon content. I went to check out their tour and have to warn you to turn down your speakers if necessary, as they have a talking toon there that you can't turn off or stop any place I could see. Very dangerous for a work (or wife) setting! You can browse through their directory to get an idea of what's inside beforehand, and once you're ready to join it'll cost $30 a month.
They have a slightly difficult security login in place, only because it's harder to read than most and I mis-read a letter the first time. It's always a tradeoff between making it difficult for computers to automatically read it, and making it easy enough for us idiots to get inside. The member's area looks much the same as the tour did, which means the graphics and all are nice, but it's very crowded and cluttered here. Along the left menu they have links to get you the latest news and updates, as well as links to their own content you can check out. In the middle, they have the news listed again, plus some links to their top AVS sites. Along the right are the site categories to start browsing through their sites which number in the hundreds.
I'm not even sure where to begin here. I guess I'll start with their own content, which is divided into a few sections: original images, comics, and movies, and then licensed images, comics, and movies. Their image galleries are pretty straightforward to browse through, and they offer them in slideshow format or zip files as well. There's a good amount to see, and they look about as good as expected (usually coming in around 800x600). Browsing through the videos was a bit annoying, first because their Original Videos link is dead (it just refreshes their homepage, which I pointed out to them a week ago or so), and second because the Licensed Videos section requires quite a few clicks to get to some actual content at times. Once you find some, they seem to come as a Flash file which is different, and play in your browser. Quality is good I guess, though the initial window is pretty small compared to what I'm used to watching (full screen is available).
I'd say the easiest way to find some good sites in their AVS network is through the top sites listing. It's only in a small frame on the main page, but if you click through to a site category (on the right), you can also find it in the next menu there to view them a little easier. Most of the site titles and descriptions aren't really too helpful, so you'll be stuck browsing through them to find the ones you like best. It's hidden a little bit, but if you find a site you really like, click the thumb/pushpin next to it to add it to your "favorits" list for easy viewing later on.
Getting to the sites is easy as no extra logging in is required. Each site is its own unique thing, and such they will all look and function a bit different. I believe they all pull their content from the same source though, so that should be similar at least. I had a little bad luck while browsing through the sites. Some of them took a long time to load (which is weird since they're all hosted on the same network it seems), on others I got problems when trying to view their videos (one site had multiple 404 errors, another was just spitting out the HTTP header info only), and on another I was asked to join or login again (though I was still able to get around the rest of the site(s) just fine). When I finally found a video, it was broken into two parts, of of which were 300MB+! On top of that, my download speed was at an awful 12KB/sec. which would have taken 10 hours or so to get just one clip.
Because of all this, I decided to switch from our cable connection to the DSL connection to see if I had any more luck. That video still came in just as slow as before unfortunately, so that wasn't fixed. However, sites that were slow before seemed to work okay, and other videos downloaded much quicker. Although they're all hosted on .hentaikey.com, somehow it seems the speed can vary (or they're just having some temporary up and down problems right now). The one common thread over anything is large files. I found DivX, WMV, and MPG, but they were always large downloads that take a while even at full speed. Quality was about as good as you'd expect, and they looked good to me (they were decent-sized videos, 640x480 or higher usually). Watch out though, as some WMV files I found had DRM protection on them unfortunately. It was a lenient license that didn't expire at least though. Another weird thing was that some of the videos didn't have any nudity, let alone sex going on. Maybe that's part of the niche that I didn't know about.
So the name of the game here is content, and a lot of it. With so many sites up too, something new is put up multiple times daily (though there are a lot of sites that don't update as well). They have more exclusive material than most they claim, so that's another positive. The big drawbacks come in the form of inconsistency, and very confusing navigation. With so many video formats, a few linking problems here and there, and just more difficult navigation than usual, the user experience wasn't as good as it could be here. If you've got some time to figure everything out and how to use it best, I think you get a good bang for your buck here. All in all, it's definitely worth a look, and it's up to you how much you like it or not.
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