Type of Site: Video Network  
Address: www.americanvice.com 
Price: 
$17.95/month
Date of Review:
February, 2010
Pornreports Rating: 

    

Review:

FEBRUARY 2010 RE-VISIT

OK, it's been a little over a year since we checked out this DVD download site. Time to give it another look.

As you might expect, all the news is good. The entire catalogue has been converted to DVD quality h. 264. Downloads actually come in three options: portable, computer, and DVD. You can also stream in two players, one with full widescreen and the other for inline browsing. 

And of course there's more of it. Up to 2,400 videos when we visited this time, and 14,600 scenes. Same update schedule of adding a couple of new DVDs a day. As for exclusive material, this site is one of only two to offer Extreme Associates titles (see here) and has exclusive rights to Supercore titles (see here) since that is their own studio. 

As we noted in our previous reviews, one of the most impressive things about this site is the editorial material. Every fucking scene has a critical breakdown! And these are often quite insightful and helpful too (you can even browse the Editor's Choice selections). We didn't agree with all of the opinions (like the major hate on the editor has for Eva Angelina -- who, like her gal pal Eve Lawrence, is a lousy porn actress, but her pussy looks incredible when shot from behind in close-up while riding a cock), but it's a great personal touch and we really enjoyed just browsing the site reading these. 

And again as noted in our previous reviews, the site tour not only allows you to see everything they've got, but also sample every DVD and scene with no limits. This is a great preview, and it also allows you to play with the site's interesting "RebelSearch" technology. Check it out and we think you'll agree this is a great value.

OCTOBER 2008 RE-VISIT

A year after their launch, and our first review, this site has grown nicely and established itself as one of the top DVD download sites. Now admittedly the competition is tough in this niche, but as we've said many times before the fact is all of these sites are an excellent deal, allowing you to download hundreds of movies for less than the price of a single DVD retail. What this means for the porn economy generally we couldn't tell you. Doesn't seem like a sustainable business model for most studios, but there you have it.

Tech specs were the same as last time. You can view the movies as a stream or download them (no DRM) or download them in medium (500 kb/s), high (1000 kb/s) or DVD (2000 kb/s) formats. They're adding new DVDs at a rate of 5 every three days and when we visited this time were up to 1700-plus DVDs (over 10,000 scenes). Most of what we said in our earlier review about what makes this site stand out from the other DVD download sites still applies. In particular these are the things that we thought were worth noticing:

(1) Individual scene and DVD reviews. Somebody has put a lot of work into writing these and it shows. Not only that, whoever writes them sure knows their shit. (OK, they did spell "Hemingway" with two m's, but nobody's perfect.)

(2) They now have a performer index, which they didn't have (at least working properly) on our previous visit. The girls are also ranked, which was kind of fun. Hannah Harper was number one, with Audrey (the site's cover girl) coming in second.

(3) If you've got a major Audrey addiction then this is the site for you. They've got an exclusive with the Supercore titles, so you'll see more of here than anywhere else that we know of. 

(4) Navigation is a lot smoother and easier than a year ago, in part because of the "Reb3l Search" technology. This is basically a powerful keyword search tool. We're not sure we'd call this something really unique or new, but it does work well and gives the site one of the most complete indexes around.

So there you have it. As we started out by saying, and have said many times before, most DVD download sites are a great deal and this is no exception. A membership is $17.95 a month (if you join for a year it's $99.95, which works out to $8.33/month). As with all of these sites you can browse everything they've got, and see how it's laid out, just by taking the tour, so . . . why wouldn't you?

AUGUST 2007 REVIEW

On the one hand this is yet another video download site. On the other . . . 

The splash page announces that this is "Otto and Audrey's American Vice Rebel." And there's a picture of a rather funky-looking pair apparently dominating some girl. Are they Otto and Audrey? Who the fuck are Otto and Audrey anyway? We didn't see any About page explaining. Is this something we should already know? Hmmm.

Well, in case you were wondering, Otto is Otto Bauer and he is married to Audrey, who is Audrey Hollander (2006 AVN Performer of the Year). Together they run their own porn production company called "Supercore." So now you know.

Get inside and other mysteries await. Apparently American Vice Rebel is powered by "Rebel Search Technology." This mainly seemed to be an advanced form of category search rather than anything totally unique. And for some reason it didn't work for us unless you started it from the Home page. Otherwise it looks good, but we couldn't figure out why they didn't also have a performer index, especially since individual performers are all cross-linked from each of the scenes they appear in. Or maybe there was such an index and we didn't see it.

Another mystery, while we're on the subject. How often does this site update? The short, accurate, answer to that is "frequently." But we can't give you a more precise answer because the date stamps were all wonky. When we visited they had a whole page of new updates dated a week in advance. They also seem to only date the latest DVDs every three or four days. We couldn't figure it out. What we can tell you is that we visited one day and they had 890 DVDs, and when we visited again four days later they were up to 915. So they are bulking up fast.

Here's what really stood out for us as different from most of the other DVD download sites out there:

(1) Editorial quality. Every scene in every DVD comes with a written, opinionated commentary. And each DVD comes with an "Editor's Choice" for best scene in that DVD. Now we didn't agree with everything we read (don't be dissing Ashlyn Gere you bastards! we still worship that woman!) but it does represent a real effort and the opinions are well expressed and professionally informed.

(2) Some odd niche titles. Let's face it, the main thing you want to know about a DVD download site is whether they've got some stuff that you haven't see anywhere else. And since you can browse all of these sites for free, it's pretty easy to check this for yourself. This is what we encourage you to do. For what it's worth, we saw some more obscure fetish titles than we've seen elsewhere. Do a search for Cooking With Mistress Ambra at your own peril! What kind of weird shit is that? In addition to this strange stuff there are also a few different classic and softcore labels. No question they have a lot of movies that are also available on other sites, but we were pleasantly surprised to find quite a bit of material we hadn't seen anywhere else. Apparently Otto and Audrey do have some exclusive arrangements (including all their own Supercore stuff), and that's great news for porn hunters.

(3) Interesting trial membership offer. The monthly rate here of $9.95 is ridiculously low, but it actually gets even better. You can sign up for free and enjoy five free downloads right off the bat. Kind of hard to knock that.

Aside from this, it's pretty much what you'd expect. You can download everything, without DRM, in three formats (all Windows Media): Med (500 kb/s), High (1000 kb/s) and DVD (2000 kb/s). About the only thing we missed here was the "edit your own clip" function that's used by sites like VideoBox and Adult Rated

Good deal? Well, duh. Of course it's a good deal. In fact it's a great deal. You're getting nearly 1,000 DVDs (more by the time you read this) for $10. And it even looks good when placed head-to-head against the competition, especially given some of the more obscure titles they've tracked down. It's still kind of new, which might explain some of the glitches we experienced using the search functions, but otherwise we expect this to be one of the major players in the field very soon, especially if they can keep up the mad update schedule.

Other Reviews of This Site:

---The Best Porn 
---Honest Porn Reviews

Similar Sites Under Review:

---Adult Rated
---
DVD Box
---
Nasty Cinema
---Pornstar XS
---
Screw
---
VideoBox
---
Video Hub
---
Videosz
---Vixeo
---XMovies