| Review:
(Note: Since our review TeenDreams has started
shooting its own exclusive material.-Eds.)
Maybe the first thing to say about Teen Dreams, and every review has
to start somewhere, is that its full titles is "Teenage Dreams--The
Archives." The fact that it is an archive--and a very long-running
one at that--tells you something.
While it has some content that is exclusive, you should think of it
at as a collection of licensed material. And so you might expect both highs and lows.
We'll begin with site design. Apparently the site is currently being
re-designed to make it more user friendly. This is a good idea. What is
needed more than anything is better navigation. The homepage is nice and
clean, but doesn't provide enough information. For a site as varied as
this, with so much going on and so many different sections, an annotated
site map explaining exactly what is where (see, for example, that provided by
Abby
Winters) is necessary. In addition, more thumbnails are needed for
the photo gallery and video sections--not to mention the "Recently
Added" area on the main page. The main video page, for example, is
just one long list of video "series" (numbering 191 when we
visited). Some sort of organization scheme has to be put in place. We
would recommend arranging the videos by their producers or maybe into
high-speed and modem sections. The general classification system of pics
into solo, hardcore, lesbian and toys is fine, but needs more
cross-referencing among the models. The model index wasn't very helpful
either. We saw someone named Abigail we liked but were surprised to find
20 Abigails (not to mention Abbys) in the index, some of whom looked the same.
This all has the effect of making browsing the site very much a kind of
pot-luck. As noted, however, improvements seem to be in the works.
Now on to the Archives themselves. As noted, not much of the material
is exclusive. Particularly in the video section you will find movies of
girls from all over the world and from a number of different producers.
Quality varies pretty wildly, with some huge files of nearly 200 megs
and sharp picture quality for high speed users, to tons of scrappy
little 3 meg files that didn't impress us very much. Again, none of this
is sorted out. The pics tend to all be of a better than average quality
and can be downloaded in large zip files.
The amount of content is huge, and is the main reason we're giving
this site such a high mark. This really is an impressive collection,
covering a lot of ground and updating daily at a rate of 3,000 pics a
week (video around three times a week). The editors are doing a good job
of selecting quality material. At times we thought it was covering a bit too much ground, as there
were some shoots where the models clearly weren't teenagers, but the
philosophy behind the site could be pretty loose.
The "Extras" are above average, including an extensive library
of clips from NetVideoGirls and some professional feeds. Support is
quite thorough and there is also a forum for feedback. We thought this
was a very good collection of material and quite responsibly done.
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