Review by John O'Connell on 2/16/06

I came across this site by chance when I was surfing the web. At first I thought I had just came across the Cal-Star site where you could order video tapes and DVD's. Upon further inspection, I realized this was a members site that offers full length downloads of Cal-Star productions. I thought to myself, I couldn't have possibly read that correctly. There has to be a catch someplace. I've seen so called "full download" sites before that offer a mere handful of the videos they claim to have online. I was skeptical, figuring that perhaps they rotate the video collection every week or month so that the person looking at the site gets rooked into paying for a membership only to find out the video they wanted is not available. However, the site claims that over 50 Cal Star videos are online and available for a full version download and that they do not remove or rotate videos. So, I figured what the heck, I'll pay the $30 for a month and report my findings to the SPReview readers.

If at some point any of you decide to take out a membership, I would like to give you a heads up that after signing up you will NOT receive a confirmation email with your username and password. The password is assigned to you by the billing company, so it's important that you write it down when it is given to you. Some people don't do that, figuring the information will be emailed to them. Now, with that said, let's talk about what's inside. I entered my credentials and cautiously began to peruse the members area. The first thing I noticed was an update list, which showed what had been added in the last 2 weeks. It appears as though the site is updated almost every day, or perhaps even every day with new parts to videos. From what I could tell, it appears as though 2 new videos are added every week with parts being added regularly with the last update being a full download option. Unlike some of the other sites I've seen, you can expect to have all parts online for any given production in about a 2 week window. Not too bad. Once the video has been completely loaded to the site, it is there permanently and will not be rotated out. At the time of this writing, they have over 55 full length California Star videos online. Most of them are complete with full download options.

As I mentioned, you have an option when it comes to the downloading. Videos can be downloaded in 10 parts or in 1 single file. If you do not have a high speed connection, I would recommend the single parts as the 15 or so full files I downloaded so far are all over 500 MB a piece. All of the productions are the full length versions of their DVD/VHS counterparts. Nothing has been trimmed or left out. Files are of the WMA type. Technical specs are a 360 x 276 screen size, expandable to full screen (with some quality loss) and a 1.43 Mbps bit rate. While the picture quality is not of a DVD clarity, it is pretty good. Much better than if you were playing an original on your VCR. And there are no strings attached. Once you download the video, it's yours to keep. No encryption that will make the clip useless after a certain amount of time or anything like that.

Some of the videos have a gallery that you can click on, which loads a page of thumbnailed photos. These thumbnails will expand the image to a nice quality photo averaging around 800X600 each. The only thing is that not every production has a photo gallery, probably one half to two thirds. There is also a bonus site that includes some free material from other pay spanking sites.

I will have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome of this site. When I purchased the membership, I had already prepared myself for the disappointment. However, that disappointment was quickly replaced with glee as I saw all of my favorite Cal Star videos being available as a full download. If you are a fan of Cal-Star and would love to have their videos as downloadable clips, then you need to give this site a look.