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| Content Quantity: |
20/20 |
Content Quality: |
19/20 |
Updates: |
10/10 |
| Entertainment: |
15/15 |
Navigation & Design: |
10/10 |
Download: |
4/5 |
| Value for Money: |
15/15 |
Reviewer's Tilt: |
5/5 |
Total: |
98/100 |
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Teen Dreams is by far one of the most impressive sites I've yet come across - in all categories. Dating back to '97 and with constant exclusive and non-exclusive photo and video updates, Teen Dreams is a huge site, and the model archive is no less impressive with well over 5,000(!) girls, both well known hardcore and softcore babes and amateurs.
The solo girl photoset and video sections are the biggest, but the lesbian and hardcore guy/girl areas of Teen Dreams are certainly not small by any measure.
Given the age of the site it's not surprising that the technical quality of the content varies significantly, but it's been improved well over the years and a large part of the fairly recent content looks fantastic.
And last but certainly not least, excellent site navigation features help pushing Teen Dreams all the way to the top of my list.
(Read the full review below)
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| Visit Teen Dreams |
Hardcore Meters
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Help
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Site info help
Site info updated March 29 2008
| Pictures: |
8,200+ photosets (approx. 50-150 per set)
Resolution varies, as high as 1800 px on exclusive photosets, 800-1200 px on most non-exclusive |
| Video: |
1,250+ (approx. 5-30 minutes each)
Windows Media (wmv) available (mpeg, Real Player and other formats on older videos)
Highest quality: wmv 720x576, 2000 kbit (quality varies a lot between old and recent content)
No DRM protection |
| Bonus: |
1,400+ photosets and 550+ videos from photographer/producer/director Viv Thomas |
| Pricing: |
* Special Discount *
1 month recurring: $19.95 |
Update, March 29 2008
Time for a review update I think - it's been over a year since my last Teen Dreams revisit afterall, and I do like to keep up to date with particularly the highest rated sites.
It's not like there's much new to add though (though as per usual in my review updates, I'll no doubt end up writing a dozen lines about all this new stuff that isn't there, consider yourself warned) - nor that anything new was really needed.
The site interface update I mentioned last time was obviously completed a long time ago, and the site no longer has the slightly outdated (yet still featureful) look it did when I wrote the original review.
In terms of content, Teen Dreams is still growing at a very brisk pace, with as much as six new photosets in a single day and three new videos at least a couple of days a week as well.
The total amount of content on the site currently amounts to around 1,250 videos and what appears to be around 8,200+ photosets - the latter though oddly enough smaller than the roughly 10,000 photosets during my original visit back in 2006. Not sure if I'm just not capable of simple addition (I know I stink at math, but that much?!), or if they've weeded out in the oldest archives.
Whatever the case may be, there's no arguing that there's a ton of new video and photo content on the site.
And then of course there's that 3rd party bonus section that has actually proved to be my favourite part of my Teen Dream memberships (sorry Teen Dream owners, you certainly aren't doing a remotely bad job with the main site, but Viv Thomas is just the world's best director of lesbian porn - using a long list of my favourite East European models).
The Viv Thomas section is still here - and constantly growing with new photosets and video scenes from the director's latest DVDs (they've made some minor changes to the interface though, so it looks like I can no longer see the complete content numbers without manually counting my way through hundreds of pages. The numbers in the info box above are estimates based on the previous ones). So I just got a new load of extremely hot and fairly recent lesbian videos with girls like Nella, Jo, Sophie Moone, Eve Angel and many others.
And I also got to redownload the older ones in the improved 640x480, 750 kbit quality, which has now been applied to all the video content rather than just the most recent as the case was during my last visit.
So basically whether you join Teen Dreams for the vast amount of solo, lesbian and guy/girl teen content on the main site, the Viv Thomas sections or both, this is still a site well deserving of the original 98/100 score I handed out. And it would be even if cost ten bucks more than the discounted $19.95 monthly price it's still sporting.
(Screenshots of redesigned member area)
Update, January 13 2007
I'm just in the process of updating site info for a bunch of sites today, with Teen Dreams being one of them. Content updates are as steady as they were when I wrote the original review (several new photosets a day and around six new videos a week), but with the improvements to site interface and performance they are working on at the moment, it seems like they have at least temporarily disabled access to the oldest video archives, meaning the total number of videos (not counting the bonus Viv Thomas section which is still there, and growing on a weekly basis) is actually a bit smaller than the last time.
Even if the old archives shouldn't come back I think it's safe to say most of us can live without the oldest ~200-250 low quality videos when we have another 860+ to watch.
Even though this is just a quick update rather than a full site reevaluation, I think I'll still mention an improvement to the Viv Thomas bonus section as I raved so much about it in the original review (that director/producer still makes some of the hottest lesbian videos in my opinion, and the solo and b/g stuff isn't half bad either). All fairly recent videos are now in a much improved 640x480, 750 kbit video quality (and still downloadable). Certainly not half bad (rather pretty great actually) when you consider this is essentially just 3rd party "plugin" content.
Original review
I don't really know why I haven't been aware of Teen Dreams' existence until now - given its age (online since '97) and size it seems like a site I really should know.
Well, I've been making up for that now by spending quite a few hours snooping around in their huge photo and video archives. Solo, lesbian, hardcore guy/girl, group - you'll find a bit of everything here, and while not all the content is exclusive to Teen Dreams (the exclusive sets are clearly marked as such), I even found myself browsing through page after page of non-exclusive photosets and videos I haven't seen before.
The total contents of the archives currently amount to more than 8,000 photosets and 1,000 videos.
In addition to that you get a slew of bonus content in the form of no less than 470+ videos and 1230+ photosets from famous porn producer/director Viv Thomas (with new ones added daily, separate from the regular Teen Dreams updates) as well as 26 downloadable teen hardcore DVDs (I've seen all or most of them before at VideoBox and co. though).
The Viv Thomas content was a real treat for a Eurobabe lover like me - I must have added 50+ videos to my "don't ever hit delete on these" harddrive folders with girls like Eve Angel, Sophie Moone, Jo, Peaches, Silvia Saint and Sandy.
While we are on the topic of models, you'll find early teen content with famous babes like the ones mentioned above as well as many others - eg. Swan (or Justine Joli as the calls herself these days), Charlie Laine and Monique Alexander (there is recent content with some of them as well, but Teen Dreams isn't exactly the first site to be a bit too liberal with the definition of the word teen, and push the range into the early to mid twenties as well).
There's reportedly a staggering 5,600+ model on the site in total - and nope, I didn't verify that with manual counting.
Teen Dreams is also constantly adding new content and new models to the site - around 24 photosets and six videos every week - some of the new teen babes familiar faces, most not.
Worth mentioning are also the navigation features, which on a site of this size are pretty important. While the actual look of the site is somewhat bland, Teen Dreams certainly doesn't disappoint where it really matters - plenty of features to make life as easy as possible for members.
On the main page you'll find a list of the latest updates, as well as several entry points into the huge back archives - multiple categories for the photo content (solo, amateur, lesbian, boy/girl, Viv Thomas galleries etc.), slightly less well sorted video archives (by category anyway), an alphabetized model directory (all 5,600+ of them) and basic searches like hair color, breast size and location of the shoot (bedroom, office, outdoors etc.).
If that isn't enough to locate what you're looking for, there's an advanced search engine on the site where you can filter by ten different properties (among others clothing, breast size, shaved/trimmed/hairy pussy, location, action type - dildo/oral/anal/group etc., photos/videos), add a date range as well or just do a simple search for a specific model name.
(Member area screenshots)
And while we are at it I might as well mention the option to rate all sets (and see their average rating), post or read comments on them or add them to your favourites page.
Photosets can also be downloaded in a single zip file - something that really should be a given on any photo heavy site, but unfortunately that isn't always the case.
I'm also happy to report that the technical quality is very high on a large part of the content - but on the other hand also (not unexpected) pretty lacklustre on especially the older content and the Viv Thomas videos, keeping the site from a perfect 20/20 in this category.
The exclusive photos are sometimes as large as 1200x1800 pixels (and I found photos dating back four years that were 1280 pixels on the long side, not exactly standard in 2002) and they always look crisp and sharp rather than overcompressed and blurry.
The rest of the photos vary a bit in size and sharpness, but a large part of them appear to look great at 1000-1200 pixels. It would probably take me a few months to trawl through the entire archives, so I've had to settle with some random sampling.
The quality on the video content varies significantly. Going back to the oldest movies (appropriately placed in a section called "original movies") they generally look like you would expect from Internet video around five to eight years ago - like crap.
Fortunately things have improved progressively over the years at Teen Dreams, and most of the recent videos (some 800 of them) have gone from pretty good to a very impressive 720x576 or 640x480 (the highest resolution used on the exclusive videos), 1500-2000 kbit. Sharp and clear and great for full screen viewing.
In the Viv Thomas sections the video quality is unfortunately universally crappy - around 320x240, 250 kbit, and usually only with a framerate of 15 to make matters even worse. As these are "plugin" areas with 3rd party content (although fortunately downloadable rather than the common streaming only) I don't think Teen Dreams have much influence on technical aspects here, otherwise I imagine the quality would have been a lot better.
As I mentioned further up though, that hasn't stopped me from downloading a whole bunch of videos from this section, but that's definately thanks to all those favourite babes of mine rather than the technical quality.
Fortunately they haven't skimped quite as much on the photo quality, all the Viv Thomas sets generally look pretty good at around 1000 pixels and not too heavily compressed.
Altogether then? One kickass teen site - despite the somewhat mixed technical quality - the best and largest I've seen so far, and only made better by the fact that it isn't just a huge archive of third party licensed content you may have seen many times before (although that is still the case with a significant part of the content at Teen Dreams), but contains a lot of exclusive photosets and videos as well.
Personally I also loved those Viv Thomas sections as you've probably figured out by now, despite the lower technical quality here. His lesbian videos in particular have always been favourites of mine, and now I got a chance to see a lot more of them.
Click here to visit Teen Dreams
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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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