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| Content Quantity: |
20/20 |
Content Quality: |
19/20 |
Updates: |
9/10 |
| Entertainment: |
15/15 |
Navigation & Design: |
9/10 |
Download: |
5/5 |
| Value for Money: |
15/15 |
Reviewer's Tilt: |
5/5 |
Total: |
97/100 |
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Site info help
Site info updated April 17 2010
| Pictures: |
1,328 photosets (approx. 20-100 per set)
1280 px resolution |
| Video: |
161 DVDs/997 scenes
Windows Media (wmv) format available (download and streaming)
Highest quality: 640x480, 2000 kbit
No DRM protection |
| Pricing: |
1 month recurring: €29.95
Special Dollar/Euro pricing info |
| Notes: |
See the April 17 and August 5 2010 updates below for a comparison of Viv Thomas Video and the recently much improved, and €10 cheaper, Viv Thomas main site (direct site link). |
Update, August 5 2010:
The main Viv Thomas site continues to improve - to the point where, if it wasn't because of my very limited schedule these days, I really ought to either give it its own separate review or ditch this Viv Thomas Video review entirely.
I can't remember if I may have mentioned this in my original review text below, but I've since had confirmed by the VT staff that Viv Thomas Video was and still is run by a third party company on license, originally because VT wasn't ready to invest in a video site yet several years ago.
That has certainly changed over the last year as the studio appears to finally be embracing that fancy Internet thing that seems to be all the rage these days, without dropping their DVD business - and generally shooting movies rather than individual scenes - just yet.
New movies are released on the site - in 720p HD version, plus lower qualities and Flash stream - typically a few weeks before DVD/pay-per-download appear in the store. Older movies are being rereleased as full scenes rather than the old segments, which includes a 720p HD version for everything originally released on DVD after they switched to HD cameras (around 2007), and I'm told the plan is to continue this process until the entire movie archive is available in these updated formats.
The number of HD scenes is currently at 93 (16 full movies, plus a few behind the scenes releases from their 2010 Babe of the Year event), and the total number of "Full Films" (downloadable DVDs) is up to 98.
New photo content keeps coming as well of course, both regular sets and behind the scenes/on location content.
I've said it many times before in various places on this review site, but with damn near every new movie release, Viv Thomas just continues to prove that they are - in my opinion - the best damn studio out there for fans of intimate, sensual, intensely sexual and insanely hot lesbian porn with gorgeous Eurobabes (and as I've mentioned before, I'm told their b/g movies are very good as well, they just don't happen to fit my taste in that genre, so for me Viv Thomas is strictly a girl/girl studio).
You might be interested in my recent long list of VERY hot lesbian scenes. A few other sites/studios are featured as well, but make no mistake about it - VT is definitely my overall favourite, and from the on location preview photos they've shown of a few upcoming movies, that's certainly not going to change any time soon.
And looking down I can see that I pretty much ended my last update with virtually indentical praise. Well, I guess nothing has really changed then - aside from the site having grown larger and better.
Update, April 17 2010:
For a long time Viv Thomas Video was in my opinion a much better choice than the main Viv Thomas site (direct site link) - which, aside from hosting the DVD/pay-per-movie-download store and very active fan and crew and model forums, also has a member section - because of a larger video collection (all but the latest few DVD releases at any given time, which still applies today) and better video quality and format choices.
Starting last year and still going on, the VT team has been making a lot of improvements to the main site though, with full video scenes instead of annoying short segments as the only option (though they still remain for older content that hasn't been rereleased), higher video quality - including the introduction of 720p HD scenes around a week ago (21 HD scenes from four DVDs available so far), several video download formats as well as streaming Flash, DVD pre-releases (members of the paysite get access to some new movies a few weeks before they are released on DVD/store downloads), new and much improved site interface, lots of behind the scenes video and photo content, and a bit more photo content in general than at Viv Thomas Video (where they've actually lost some, as mentioned in my previous review update).
Oh, and a monthly membership to the main site is €10 cheaper than a Viv Thomas Video membership.
Site choices aside, this studio continues to release some of the absolute best lesbian movies on the market (and reportedly their b/g movies are pretty good as well, but as I think I mentioned in the original review text, unfortunately not my style, so I've never watched more than a few of their b/g scenes).
2009 was a great year for fans of some of their most popular models, with numerous amazing scenes from my own top two favourites, Jo and Eve Angel, but similar excellent performances by several other experienced models - Peaches, Club Sandy, Lisa (Cameron Cruz) and Nella (a movie filmed before she went softcore) for instance - as well as some of the slightly younger fan favourites like Blue Angel, Nikita and Zara.
2010 is looking to be a great year as well, with a number of very promising lesbian movies coming up - and a few already released.
Update, July 16 2009:
Time for a review update I think - almost a year has passed since I wrote the original.
Truth be told though, given that Viv Thomas only releases an average of around or even less than one brand new DVD a month (since I'm such a huge fan of the lesbian movies, and the models, from this studio I actually buy many of the new releases on physical DVD from the online store at vivthomas.com, as I also mentioned in my original review below. I've got 25 of their girl/girl DVDs sitting on the shelf now), and pretty much all the older VT movies were already available at Viv Thomas Video, only 14 DVDs have been added since my review in August last year. Although in terms of scenes that's actually just over a hundred, so compared to many other great sites the update pace remains quite respectable.
I am however not sure what's happened in the photo section, because despite several recounts and calculations, the number I come up with now is more than 400 less than before, and around 600 lower than the number advertised on the front page (the advertised DVD number is slightly on the low side though, so it's not a blatant case of exaggerated numbers across the board).
Perhaps it was decided to remove some of the photo content to give the vivthomas.com site (which hosts both the DVD store and a member section) an edge in one area? I don't know, but in any case I suspect the video content is what most of you will mainly be interested in here anyway.
And speaking of the video content, Viv Thomas Video is never far behind the latest physical DVD releases. They are currently adding the scenes from the absolutely stellar Most Subscribed, which features the gorgeous and extremely charming Peaches in all scenes (and it's one of their longest releases in years I believe, clocking in at three hours) with various other girls, including Cindy Hope, Lucy Bell and the incredibly cute Nikita who delivers the best and most adorable virgin act I've seen in quite a while.
There are still several releases to come later this year that the VT fans are really looking forward to (such as Unfaithful 5 with a cast that includes Nella, filmed just before she made a career switch to nude modelling only I think, Jo, Eve Angel and Lisa/Cameron Cruz), but so far the talk on their forums suggest that Most Subscribed is an extremely strong candidate for VT movie of the year - beating the so far two other lesbian top titles from 2009, Lesbian Encounters (already available at Viv Thomas Video as well) and the just released Portrait of a Lesbian, starring my favourite girl/girl performer of them all, Jo.
So all in all, despite mysteriously vanishing photosets and a video update pace that can't match the (other) best lesbian sites out there, Viv Thomas Video (or vivthomas.com for the physical DVDs, or single purchase DVD downloads in higher video quality) is still a blatantly obvious recommendation for me if you want what I and quite a few others consider the hottest lesbian porn you can find.
Oh, one more thing - if you look in the cons in the original review text below you'll see that I mention issues with aspect ratio on many of the recent movies. It's unfortunately still present, but I can now recommend an arguably simpler solution than the small ratio changing utility I linked to. I suggest you use the very popular VLC Media Player (and not necessarily just for these videos but instead of eg. Windows Media Player in general).
In the "video" menu in the player there's a simple option to change playback ratio - choosing 16:9 should fix these Viv Thomas videos.
Original review:
Pros
+ I've been praising the large Viv Thomas bonus section at Teen Dreams highly in my review of that site, but I was very recently invited to review the actual source of that bonus content, Viv Thomas Video, and it turns out the it actually has a couple of significant advantages over the Teen Dreams bonus section, even though I believe the latter has all the same content (I have however been informed that the Viv Thomas section at TD will likely be limited to streaming video rather than downloads in the future, though I don't know when that will happen).
But first things first, as much as I love the lesbian videos at Club Sandy, Pix & Video and Sapphic Erotica, Viv Thomas has been my favourite director/producer of lesbian porn since the first time I watched the censored version of the popular Pink Velvet trilogy on Playboy Channel a few years back. And this year his movies have in fact made me do something I've never done before with adult movies, ordering the physical DVD versions (so far twelve of them, including the uncensored Pink Velvet 1-3) so I could have them sitting in my DVD collection, rather than just lying around as files on my harddisks. As well as enjoying the higher video quality of course.
+ There's nothing fundamentally wrong with files or harddisks though (afterall I think on last count my own porn collection was rapidly approaching 500 GB, not counting backup of the stuff I don't want to lose), which is why Viv Thomas Video is an excellent site.
All but the very few latest Viv Thomas productions are available on this site, both his many spectacular lesbian movies as well as his guy/girl videos, which I admittedly don't care nearly as much for, as I don't particularly like the (usually) intimate, "lovemaking" style outside of lesbian porn.
+ Aside from Viv's apparent ability to bring the best possible performances out of most of his models, said models are of course the main reason why I'm so fond of his movies. They include a number of the ladies that also make me come back to Club Sandy and various other sites on a regular basis, most notably Jo, the main star of the Pink Velvet trilogy and appearing in a total of nearly 70 Viv Thomas scenes over the years (68 available on this site to be exact), Eve Angel, Nella, Sandy, Vera, Sophie Moone, Sandra Shine, Peaches, Sandy, Lisa (Cameron Cruz), Zafira and several others, including girls from the "younger" generation, like Eufrat, Ariel, Suzie Carina and Lucky.
In total though, also going back to well before the Pink Velvet days (2003-05), there are several hundred models on the site.
+ Despite the name of the site you also get over 1800 photosets (again using Jo as an example, she's in 57 of them).
+ I started out by mentioning that a couple of things made Viv Thomas Video better than the bonus section at Teen Dreams. The first of them is a fourth significantly higher video quality (640x480, 2000 kbit vs. 750 kbit at Teen Dreams). The second is a better site interface, but obviously this isn't quite as important as the video quality.
+ And with regards to the site interface, I believe it just received a major overhaul and it's generally very clean and good overall with a very solid model archive, the ability to find scenes by model, DVD or niche keywords (actually, that's a third thing this site does better, no DVD indications in the TD bonus section, and you get the behind the scenes stuff from the DVDs at Viv Thomas Video as well, which is cut out at TD), a rating and personal favourites system and slideshow feature for photosets.
+ Five new photosets and two new videos a week.
Cons
- Unfortunately the aspect ratio of the recent movies that are shot in 16:9 widescreen format (at this time still only around ten DVDs) is messed up a bit, and the image has been squashed horizontally into a standard 4:3 format (same problem with all video qualities, and obviously also an issue in the TD bonus section).
I have not been able to figure out if this can be countered by some media players, but if not (and I have a feeling it can't) this is frankly a bit of a shame, and definately one of the things that makes me even more happy that I've got my favourite scenes from recent movies on the original DVDs where they obviously haven't screwed things up.
These scenes are still watchable though, if you can live with girls and locations that look a tad "slimmer" than they ought to (update, March 14 2009: I found a very simple little utility today that fixes these videos by writing some aspect ratio meta data info to WMV files. In case you're interested here's a link (in the first forum thread). Remember to always run a virus scan on files you download from random sources like this, before you unzip and launch the program. Once that's done and the program is running and the video you want to fix, loaded, inputting 4 in the first field, 3 in the second should fix the aspect ratio. This utility might come in handy on other occasions as well, as I have now and then come across videos from other sites, also typically widescreen DVD downloads, showing the same problem).
I've also been informed that there are plans for higher video qualities at Viv Thomas Video in the future, including HD, so hopefully this problem will eventually be fixed, at least for new videos.
(Member area screenshots)
Click here to visit Viv Thomas Video
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95+ Excellent
85-94 Very Good
75-84 Good
65-74 Acceptable
-64 Don't Bother
Full rating info here
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