GayGeek

Does C1R deliver what it promises on the outside?

This website does a lot of banking on name recognition. Most every gay man has heard of Channel 1 Releasing, and most likely seen some of their work. That's what the site is hoping will lure you in. They offer tons of archived cam shows, and free DVD's to watch each week. What they don't tell you is that the quality of these "membership benefits" is pure crap. The fact that it has won a GAYVN award for best site makes me seriously question how much that award really means.

What's good about C1R? What needs improvement?

With a name like C1R on it, I went into this site with high hopes. Well, so much for wishful thinking. I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking at when I went it. It looked like one huge ad for C1R's movies. I finally found the area where members have 5 free DVD's they can view each week. I also discovered that there are archives of old cam shows from Chi Chi Larue's Live and Raw, and Dirk Yates dating back to 2001. Needless to say, this is not an easy site to navigate, as it is not at all intuitive.

As for the content itself...all videos are ONLY playable in an embedded Flash player. There is no downloading, and no other viewing option. These streams are also regularly interrupted with commercials for movies the site would like you to purchase. The quality of every video I watched was quite poor. The videos were grainy, and the sound was horrible in the few I found that actually had sound at all in them. Most of them were silent. Even the free DVD's were bad quality, partly due to the fact that they were about as old as I am! (Slight exaggeration, but not by much.) Don't go in here expecting to see the latest releases, or even last years releases in the free members section.

There is a huge gallery of models that have worked for C1R, and each has some photo galleries. The pictures in here were higher quality, and could be saved if you wished, but still were nothing to write home about. The main thrust of this site seems to be to get you to buy minutes in the VOD section, or to purchase DVD's in the store. To that end, there are numerous trailers for new and upcoming videos available to watch. Better quality video and sound as well as fresher content would go a long way towards making this a more enjoyable site.

How is C1R unique?

The site itself is not, but the content is all licensed to C1R, or one of its sister entities, Live and Raw, and Dirk Yates.