Review posted 8/15/05 by John O'Connell

Last week I came across this site merely by chance and decided to take a look at the members area. It should be noted that there are several options for surfers to choose from. You can purchase tokens to download individual movies or purchase a membership to the member area of the site. If you choose to purchase tokens, the initial lot is 100 tokens for $11.95. After that, you can purchase more in 100 token increments at just under $10.00. Each movie varies in price depending upon length and quality and token cost with all being under 100 tokens. Some are just a minute or two snippet and those are usually only 15 or 20 tokens to purchase. The full length movies vary in quality. For instance "A Crime at St. Thomas' School" is Video CD quality and plays nicely at a full screen setting. However, others such as "Dance School" have a very low resolution and viewing area. This area is pretty decent since they give the clip running time as well as give you an idea if it's high or low resolution. The members area is where I had a little bit of a problem. In the non-member areas the description of the member area leads one to believe that if you subscribe that you can download the full versions of the same movies that are being offered in the token area. Since you can do a trial membership that only costs $3.99 for one week, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Eh, maybe. What's offered inside are parts of the videos on sale in the token area. For instance, we'll take the Thomas School video I mentioned earlier. When you purchase it in the token area, you download 1 large file with the whole film on it. In the membership area, the film has been broken down into multiple parts, all of which are NOT online at the same time. There were 3 parts to this film when I purchased my membership and they were not in order of concession either. They are random sections that rotate in and out. So, there will not be more than a few clips from each film or short on the site at a time. If you want to download all parts, then you will have to continue your membership for 3, 4, 6 months, or however long it takes to complete those parts. What kind of irks me about this is that this is not explained up front. The potential member is led to believe that the full downloads will be available upon purchase of a membership. There is nothing that states only certain parts are available at any given moment. The site is only updated 4 times a month and the additions are moderate, so the customer now has the choice of either waiting for who knows how long to complete the collection of clips or purchase tokens to obtain the full version. There is also a photo gallery with a collection of photos from various films. For the Thomas School collection, it appears to be the same photos that are available for free at the RGE-Films site. Additional areas include a CP Chatroom, personal ad section, and video swap area (which is not functioning at this time). I didn't check out the other areas since once I found out I had to "collect" the parts of videos over the course of months, I pretty much had no desire to see any more. Check out the site and make your own decision. The trial is only $4 so there might be something that interests you.