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Content
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| Quality : |
18.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
14.0 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
12.5 / 15 |
| Updates : |
9.5 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
5.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
62.0 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
8.5 / 10 |
| Features : |
3.5 / 05 |
| Design : |
4.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
16.5 / 20 |
| Other |
| Originality : |
4.0 / 05 |
| Hard Facts : |
4.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
8.0 / 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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1. Great picture options (and sizes).
2. Pictures look good!
3. Pretty good monthly price.
1. Newest Flash videos can't be downloaded.
2. Video quality could be slightly better.
3. More video options would be nice too.
4. Videos are broken into a lot of smaller clips.
"Good content and a good price makes for a good site all around." |
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Ok, who's with me here? I made a few assumptions with a site called Viv Thomas I probably shouldn't have. The first was assuming that Viv was short for Vivian. From there, it's easy to jump to the idea that maybe this is an amateur's or pornstar's site. While I didn't find a bio on the site (which is strange), a few things are evident: Viv isn't short for anything, Viv is a dude, and Viv is a photographer. The site is all about his work, and boasts "high quality British adult entertainment from the master of leg sex, Viv Thomas." Hopefully that gives you a small idea of what to expect. The tour looks pretty good, with slick graphics and nice-looking images throughout.
The member's area looks similar, but it's a slight step down in my opinion. The gray/white gradient bar up top with red text they call a menu is just horrendous. I think what's really missing in the member's design is a footer to keep the nice graphics around; without it the site just looks more unfinished to me.
Once you're ready to see some content, there's a few ways to go about it, all through the weird red-text menu up top (ok, that'll be the last time I bring it up). They are divided up into galleries (which basically uses the action as the categories) such as lesbian, blondes, etc. Otherwise, you can browse by model - either by the top models, or via the model index. They have a ton of girls listed (I'm on the "T" page now which has 20 models available). From the model's page, you can view her available galleries or videos.
Each photo gallery has four options for picture size! You pick the size once, and the whole gallery is setup that way from the beginning (which saves you from having to enlarge the picture each time). The choices range from 640x480 up to 1280x1024 for most sets (although those sizes aren't exactly right, the largest ones I looked at usually hovered around 1280x850). Only a few don't have the largest size. A lot of the pictures are at least a year old now, but it helps the size of the site to have them all up there. There's no real way to find the newer sets, except in the "what's new" section which only lists eight sets right now. Most of the images have a magazine-style look and feel to them, although the content is generally a little wilder with dildos, lesbian, hardcore, etc. The new sets look pretty good, while the older ones just look like old magazine photos. They are all pretty high-quality, but the general feel can change from set to set.
The site offers streaming videos for free, or you can join a separate Viv Thomas Video site and download them. For this review, I'll just let you know what's included with your membership. The videos are hosted on another domain, although the transition is seamless (the site still looks and functions exactly the same). They list four videos per page, and you just start browsing right away. They also have two pulldown menus to check out - one lists categories, and the other lists models you can jump to instantly. The one thing I missed while browsing was knowing how many videos were available. All you get is a "next" and "back" link never knowing how much more there is. Also, a better search feature would be nice (to find, say, teens with big boobs instead of just one or the other). The videos obviously play in your browser, in Windows Media format, with three quality options (56k, 128k, and 256k). If you were determined, I'm sure you can find a way to play these in a separate player, allowing you to zoom and save them if you wanted, but we won't get into that. You also have the option watch the video in full, or in two-minute clips. The quality was pretty good, with some lighting problems being the only thing I found. There's a good mix of different types of content to check out as well.
This site is tough for me to judge; overall it's not really too bad. For $20 a month, you get quite a bit of content. It looks like they update about once a week with five new sets. A lot of the content is older, which means the quality isn't quite up to today's standards, but I'd much rather have it available than not. I would have liked to had seen a way to find newer sets easier to check out more of the good stuff. The best way I found for this was to browse by galleries, but I preferred looking for models I liked first. The real thing that's lacking for me is an excitement factor since the content is pretty standard stuff. It is all exclusive, which is great, but it didn't really stand out to me as something I just had to see more of. But if you're a fan of higher-quality content, the site is a great bargain and definitely worth a look.
| 1st Follow-Up Review |
Review: 06-06-05 |
Well, a lot of the basics look the same around here so far. I think there might be a new design, since I didn't mention the blue and white in my initial review. However, functionality seems the same all around. We still have the high-quality pictures in four sizes, and the videos are still streaming only. It still costs just $20 a month, which is a pretty good deal for exclusive content. They've been updating regularly, though the timing of it is a bit erratic here and there from what I'm seeing the past couple weeks. There's still no master list of updates in chronological order that I saw, which is a big deal. The categories are nice, but sometimes I just want to see whatever it is that's new! Still, a good deal if you're into the content for sure.
Score increased from 81.6 to 82.7.
| 2nd Follow-Up Review |
Review: 08-20-06 |
Well I was told they have a new design up here, and while I don't quite remember the specifics on what it looked like before, it looks pretty good all around for now. Some new browse features must have been added as well, since a few things I mentioned previously have been upgraded (such as a place to see their newest content, a model's index, and surprisingly no more search engine). Newer videos are coming in Flash right now which is an interesting choice. They start playing pretty quick and look okay, though of course you can't download them or anything. In the end, this cosmetic update is good, and of course all the basics are great as before which makes for a solid site still.
Score increased from 82.7 to 86.5.
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