|
Content
|
| Quality : |
16.5 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
14.5 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
12.5 / 15 |
| Updates : |
8.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
4.5 / 05 |
| Download : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
59.0 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
6.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
4.0 / 05 |
| Design : |
5.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
15.0 / 20 |
| Other |
| Originality : |
4.0 / 05 |
| Hard Facts : |
3.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
7.5 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
|
|
1. Lots of stuff to check out.
2. Great looking site.
1. Difficult navigation.
2. Lack of site personality.
"A great site if you're into mainstream porn sites, but not if you want something unique." |
|
|
Private.com is one of those sites that I thought I knew who was behind it, and what would be going on, but in reality I have no clue. It just sounds like a name you should know - Private.com, it HAS to be someone important. But looking around, I'm guessing that they produce a ton of content, mostly in the forms of a magazine, their photos, and videos.
The member's area is a huge, confusing mass of stuff to look at. The good news is that it looks pretty, but when first logging in I didn't really know what to do first. There's random magazine covers, photos of gorgeous women, polls, and more to dazzle you. Anyhow, my first click was the "stars" button on the upper menu, so that maybe I can have some sort of flow with this review. Probably not though, we'll see.
More confusion in the stars section, but along the right I found a link to "stars photo section" which I happily clicked. Finally, I had found some thumbnails of galleries available to look at. I feel a lot more comfortable now :) Each gallery contains 15 photos, no more, no less... ever! The pictures are high quality, but only 600x450 or so which is rather small. Apparently the photos are from sets from their magazines, as they provide a reference at the bottom of each set as to where it's from. I don't know if they offer up all of their magazines online or anything, but a link right there would have been nice to see some more or something, as 15 photos isn't a whole lot. Inside the stars section, there's a lot more links to other random features of their girls I guess. You can find more photos, and some bios of the girl to keep you browsing around. I just wanna see more stuff/content though!
Their live sex show section should have been put in their sextras section if you ask me, as it's mostly just some plugins of the standard sort. Boring, and no I don't want to spend any more than the $30 I already spent to get in!
Their magazines section is pretty large, with full archives of four different magazines, and their special editions. Since I'm not an adult magazine reader, I'm not sure if these are widely-known or what. You can view the entire contents of these magazines, which mostly include photoshoots and ads, but only in jpg format at 724x511 for their newer stuff. It's pretty hard to read any words, and look at photos (which are in magazine layout format, so sometimes up to five photos per page, and you're looking at two pages at once here) with it being so small. The really new ones offer up Acrobat images of them, which can be zoomed in on, but it's a pain to open up each page in Acrobat separately. Overall the magazine section is just a bit weird due to it being difficult to see online and stuff. I would have much rather seen an online version of each of their mags, which is specifically made for us web people.
True to form, their movies section left me a little confused as to what to check out first. On the right there are a few video box covers that link to stuff, but if you notice above them are links to "private movies," "private channels," etc. What distinguishes one from the other? Well it looks like the Private Movies are actual videos of theirs, broken down by scene, and available for download. The scenes are usually 15-20 minutes, and it appears the show the whole video online (although I'm not 100% sure). Most are offered in Windows Media format, but unfortunately they're a bit small (usually around 260x200 or so, weird), and only encoded at about 100kbps. For some reason they don't look as bad as the #'s say, although they're not great for sure. Some videos have a DIVX download link above them, but you have to pay extra for these, and it's only to "rent" the video for a few days or a month. Not a very good deal considering you can see them online already, lol.
The other video section that is of some interest is the Private Channels. It's kinda hard to tell if it's a plugin or not, I think it is honestly, but I think the videos are Private's own. Sorry I'm not more up to date on these third party things. Anyhow, in here you'll choose a category from the 14 available (double penetration, blowjobs, etc), and then choose a clip number (1-500+) and the clip will start playing in the browser. The quality isn't great, they are in Windows Media sized at about 240x180, encoded around 100kbps, but the cool thing is just the sheer number of clips. They're not overly long at about two minutes, but there's so many you could watch clips for quite a while and not get too bored.
The sextras section contains stories, wallpapers, greeting cards, comics, etc... the standard extras-type stuff. Nothing too spectacular here, just stuff to browse around if you're into these kinda things.
Private has a lot of things to look at, but none of their offerings are ever done 100% correct in my opinion. The navigation for me was obviously more difficult than most for some reason, part of which might just be that they have a lot to see. But the small-ish pics, hard to read magazine pages, barely-decent quality videos, etc., it all adds up to a so-so site for me. At $30, I expect to see a well thought out site, without all the upsells here. If it was $20, I'd feel much better about giving it higher scores, but I honestly expected more here. To me it lacks personality a bit, and fits into the mainstream porn site more, which I just don't enjoy as much. It's not horrible, but I don't think I'd stick around long.
| 1st Follow-Up Review |
Review: 02-04-05 |
Well, here we are again back at Private's site. On the surface, much looks the same here. The design is still there (which was quite nice), though they've added a dialup version of their site as well. I went straight to the photo galleries to check them out, and I noticed an "enlarge" button this time. Was it there before?? The pictures come out at 1200x800 once you hit that, which is a lot better than the teeny-tiny dimensions I mentioned last time. Navigating the site is still quite confusing unless you happen to know what every little link means. First time visitors watch out, as you can go into sensory overload pretty easily.
The videos have been both upgraded and downgraded. Confused? Let me explain. Before they were featuring 100kbps videos which is a pretty awful number. Some of their newer movies have a "broadband" label on them, which is quite promising. Those are featured at 300kbps which is quite an improvement. They still just look "okay" to me though when compared to lots of sites out there. The bad news is that they are all DRM protected now, which means you have to be a member to view them. What a mixed bag that is.
The rest seems to be much the same. Overall, the high price is what kills this site most still. The quality improvements are good, but there's still a lot of room to increase that still. And nobody likes DRM!
Score increased from 81.4 to 82.0.
| 2nd Follow-Up Review |
Review: 12-03-07 |
Private.com continues to do what it does best, and that's add a lot of content lol. There's just a lot to see here, and updates still come regularly of course. From what I remember, the site is similar to our last visit, though honestly it's been a long time. These mega-sites have a tough time remaining nimble, but they make up for it in terms of quantity. The videos look decent, but the DRM is still in place. The navigation is still a bit difficult, but it's workable. You just have to be in the mood for this specific type of content I guess. The price is a little curious, as it seems like you could cancel and re-join at the lower price each month if you really wanted to. At least they offer the discount, which makes that first month a decent join.
Score decreased from 82.0 to 81.5.
|
