GayDemon's review of BadPuppy

Bad Puppy has been around forever, and I'd say it's one of the most well-known gay sites around. It's also a little different - besides access to Bad Puppy itself, when you join, you get access to over 60 independently owned and operated "contributor sites" as a bonus. On the tour, there is a list of the content inside Bad Puppy, and the list goes on and on. It sounded pretty interesting to me, so let's go inside and see if it lives up to its promises.

When you enter the main member page of Bad Puppy, there are 7 different sections listed on top. Each of these have dropdown menus that appear under them with further choices. Underneath are the latest models, What's New for Today, featured content, plus a list of tags, which is a handy way to find what you're looking for.

Let's talk pics first. The first section listed in the Pictures area is the Bad Puppy exclusive models. There are over 1600 pic sets dating all the way back to 1996. Most of the sets are of attractive solo guys from 18 to 30 who range from slender to athletic to muscular but not huge. The are some major differences between the old and newer sets. The largest difference is that the older pics are on the small side, but that starting with the pic sets in late 2003, members area able to choose their pic size by clicking the Settings button on the model home page in the pics section. There are 4 resolutions to choose from - 450x600, 600x800, 768x1024 and 960x1280. These sizes are approximate, but most of the sets from late 2003 on are offered in all 4 sizes rather than only in the smallest size.

The galleries are a bit annoying as huge amounts of thumbs load in a frame on the left and the pics appear on the right. You can choose the slideshow instead or download the pics and look at 'em however appeals to you best. Most of the pics here range from average quality to good, although a few of the oldest sets might be closer to amateur.

Next let's check out the Badpuppy Model Video Clips. These aren't actually all clips and there 347 of them, all of which are downloadable and use no DRM. The videos have gone through a lot of changes over the years. There are a handful of vids from 1996 to 1998, but it's in 1999 that we start seeing more frequent video updates. The older videos are offered in either AVI or AVI and Real formats. They're on the small side and the quality isn't the best, but keep in mind that most people were on dialup at the time. Honestly the oldest of Bad Puppy's videos are among the best of the vids that were available at the time.

As we move toward the middle of the videos, perhaps 2005 or so, we come to different formats. A lot of the movies then are offered in WMV, MPG and Quicktime. For the most part the videos are shown at 320x240 with a bitrate of 1.3 Mbps or better. These videos are better quality than the older ones, which are amateur quality.

It's probably no surprise that the newest videos are the biggest. These days the Bad Puppy videos are offered in WMV format, shown at 720x576 with a bitrate of around 1 Mbps. These are mostly average quality, the bitrate on the low side for the size, so expect some loss of quality if you go full screen. There's also a dialup version of each movie, which is strangely the same size but a radically lower bitrate. And there is a Quicktime and an iPod insignia on each video page. These actually both link to the video in MPG format, which isn't the preferred format for older video iPods or other handheld players, but will work for Mac users and some handheld owners.

Let's talk about the other sections inside Bad Puppy.

The Pictures menu includes stories, ezines, newsgroup photos plus some pic galleries from sponsors like Playgirl. These galleries are okay, but are in no way to be confused with access to the actual sites. The Videos menu includes a section called Streaming Video Section, which is where the video feeds are, plus there is a pay per view section and a more section, where there are links to the videos from some of the contributor sites. The Bonus Sites section is mostly the contributor sites, which are mostly like mini-paysites. These are made by independent webmasters, so they have different content, layouts and formats. You'll find some good stuff in there as well as some non-exclusive stuff you've probably seen around.

There's also a section called Movies, which is found in the Pictures and the Videos menus. Movies is an odd section because many of the listings don't actually offer videos, just vidcaps from a DVD. The rest have a scene from the DVD broken into downloadable clips. There are over 2000 listings in Movies and all have a shopping cart icon for those who would like to buy the DVD through Bad Puppy while some have a link to watch the DVD as a pay per view option. I can't even guess how many videos there actually are in this section, but none of the older listings I checked have videos and well under half of the newer ones. Looking through this section is like a treasure hunt, and if you like searching, you'll like this. If you just want to get to the porn, you may find this section less amusing.

The Community section contains links to the Bad Puppy forums, which are definitely worth checking out as they not only let you chat with other members but also list all the updates. There's also a personals section where you can browse ads or leave your own. I'm not sure if you can check your messages in the personals for free, but there's lots of browsing. The Community section also includes links to things like gay news sites, jokes of the day, pics of the day plus links to other gay community and link sites. Most of these links are free and are not actually part of Bad Puppy.

There's also a couple other sections you should know about. One is the Help section, where members can get all sorts of support and the other is the Live section. There are 29 live houses and cam sites, some of which are listed as having upsells and some of which are not. Some which are not listed as having upsells do have 'em, but if you love live cams, there's a lot to see and do here.

I did run into one potential issue. It appears that Bad Puppy members may have to email support in order to cancel their subscription. In the terms, it says "The User must notify Badpuppy in writing to cancel service." and in the member account area, if you click cancel, there's no easy cancel link - just an email address.

Does Bad Puppy live up to its reputation? Well, yes and no. Bad Puppy certainly is a good-sized site with years of exclusive model content plus a large helping of bonus sites and feeds, live cam sites and the Bad contributor sites. Both the exclusive pics and videos sections updates every 2 to 6 days. All the model videos are downloadable, and there's something new happening at Bad Puppy every day. Navigation is confusing and sometimes section titles aren't very helpful, and there's the movie section, with hundreds of listings that don't include movies. Still, the bottom line is that if you're looking for masses of content in all types from live to stories to video clips and you love plenty of variety, I recommend you check out Bad Puppy and see what they have to offer.

Things we liked:

• Some exclusive content
• Videos are downloadable
• No DRM used
• Frequent updates
  

Things we didn't like:

• Extremely complex and confusing navigation
• Pre-checked email list on join page
• Movies section has many listings with no movies
• Must cancel by email

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