Reviewed: 2008-11-10

Rookie Guys

gaydemon > reviews > Rookie Guys

Site Score: 49 out of 100 Videos: 16 / 20 Tour Claims: 2 / 5 Find out more about ratings, read the score criteria.
Pictures: 6 / 10 Uniqueness: 9 / 15
Content Amount: 8 / 20 Usability 2 / 5
Updates: 2 / 15 Value: 4 / 10

Cross Sales

Beware when signing up for this site, it uses pre-checked boxes on the signup page. If this option is left checked, you will automatically be signed up to other sites and charged monthly if not cancelled.

Limited Trial

This site's membership trial only gives you limited access. You will not be able to access all content.

Videos

16 exclusive videos, best quality option are the HD WMVs, shown at 1068x600 with a 4 Mbps bitrate, very good quality, 4 more speeds of WMV available including dialup, Flash videos shown at 1068x645 at good quality, video playback jerky if your internet connection isn't fast enough, 4 more speeds available, less jerky because smaller videos load quickly, videos available in clips and full scenes, streaming and downloadable vids offered, no DRM used.

Pictures

16 exclusive pic sets corresponding to videos, pics are digital stills shown at 800x534, good amateur quality, Piclens available, downloadable zip files offered.

Extras

7 bonus gay reality sites, 17 additional gay sites and feeds in a variety of porn categories.

Issues

Bonus Network section is all upsells, limited trial, pre-checked offers on join page.

Membership Cost

Credit Card processing and billing by Epoch.

  • Trial (limited): $1.95 (3 days, recurring at $39.95 every 30 days)
  • Trial (limited): $8.95 (7 days, recurring at $39.95 every 30 days)
  • Monthly: $39.95 (recurring every 30 days)
  • Quarterly: $69.95 (non recurring)

Click here to visit Rookie Guys, or read the full review below for more information:

rookie guysRookie Guys is a brand new site - so new that it hasn't had a chance to do even it's first update yet. It's off to a good start, though, with 16 full length downloadable videos, despite claims on the tour that there are only 10 vids. The site is all about guys who are first-timers when it comes to having gay sex on video. The guys on the tour are cute and horny amateurs who - to judge by their accents - come from both the U.S. and Europe.

The Rookie Guys videos are offered in both clips and full scenes, and they can be streamed or downloaded. These are some handy options, so let's start by taking a look at the best quality versions. Both streaming and downloadable are offered in 2 HD versions called HD and T1. HD is the highest quality videos the site has to offer, shown at 1068x600 with a 4 Mbps bitrate. If you're in a fast internet connection and are looking for videos you can enlarge with virtually no loss of quality, the T1 videos are the way to go. They're sharp and clear, and look as good as similar videos I've watched on DVDs. The only possible problem is that they're large in file size. That means that if you're downloading the full scenes, they'll take a little while, and if you're watching the streaming Flash vids, the playback will be jerky till you've let the video fully load.

rookie guysIf you're on a fast but not superfast broadband connection, the T1 videos should be fine for you. These are also large videos, shown at 852x480 at around 2.5 Mbps, and they also look good and play smoothly. They still may be a little too big for those on slower broadband connections, but luckily there are 2 lower quality sizes of broadband video and one for dialup users.

There are a couple things worth mentioning here. One is that the downloadable WMVs do not use DRM, so whatever you download is yours to keep, and that means that Mac and Linux users will be able to play the downloadable videos. The other is that the download speeds for me here never topped 150k, which was rather disappointing and made downloading the biggest videos take some patience.

Each episode comes with a set of pics, and these ain't vidcaps, either - they're good amateur quality digital stills shown at around 800x534. Each set of pics can be browsed in a thumbnailed gallery with good-sized thumbs to make it easy to preview each pic. Each set can also be downloaded in a zip file, which is useful if you find sets you'd like to save for later.

When it comes to extras, full members of Rookie Guys have a lot of stuff. They get access to 7 bonus reality sites with downloadable videos - some in HD - and they mostly seem to update, although not regularly. There are an additional 17 gay video feeds in various gay porn niches like latinos, big cock, asian and muscle. All in all, I'd say that the bonus material here definitely adds value for members.

rookie guysNow we come to the issues, and let's face it - all sites have some. First IMO is that on the join page there are 2 pre-checked offers. I recommend you read them before joining to decide if they interest you. Next is a link on the top of the member page that says Bonus Network. There's nothing really bonus about this section - it's stuff to buy. True, some of the live video offerings there do offer free chat, and it's worth a look, but if you want full nudity or action, you have to pay by the minute. One more thing to keep in mind is that trial members probably do not get full access to the site or access to the bonus material. And last, I really wish the site had faster download speeds.

The bottom line is that I really liked Rookie Guys. First of all, I'm a sucker for HD videos. They're bigger and better quality. Of course, it helps that these videos are downloadable and use no DRM. The pics are good quality, too. The site currently offers 16 episodes, each with pics and videos, and there's no way to be sure yet how often this site will be updating since it's only a couple days old, but most of the sites in the network do update. I'll check back in a few weeks to see how this one is doing. While this site has its issues, including so-so download speeds, there's a lot to like including a nice collection of bonus sites and feeds. Whether you like horny amateur guys or HD videos, I think Rookie Guys is worth checking out!

Things we liked:

  • Exclusive content
  • Very good quality HD videos
  • Good video options
  • Videos are downloadable
  • No DRM used
  • Nice collection of bonus sites and feeds

Things we didn't like:

  • Site just launched - no updates yet
  • Site could use some growth
  • Download speed could be faster
  • Bonus Network section is all adverts
  • 2 pre-checked offers on the join page

Click here to visit Rookie Guys


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Comments

Lambda | 18 Dec 2009 | My rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Reasons not to join this or any other Male Spectrum site:

One: It has been 13 months since the original GayDemon review and the total number videos has gone from 16 to 17. One update in over a year.

Two: On sign-up page, prechecked boxes for two sites will result in additional credit charges of $38.95 in 24 hours and $39.73 in another 2 days.

Three: The bottom of the Extras page says "A name you can trust. No spam, no selling your info, no fraudulent charges."

Four: Male Spectrum hosts almost a dozen sites and most of the few original videos are recycled and posted across all sites.

Grant | 17 Sep 2009 | My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This is a fairly good, if not (yet) great, site. My main gripe about it concerns a lack of brightness on, not just a few, but many of the videos, especially those on the bonus reality sites. And that's a real shame, since the guys and the action are pretty damn hot. Well, from what I can actually see anyway. It's not a matter, I don't believe, that the scenes were badly lit, but rather the way the videos have been processed. The short video previews available on the site's tour are so clear and bright, yet the full versions of some of those same videos within the site are decidedly much darker and colour saturated. Another thing - the picture thumbs for most of the videos have the word "downloadable" on them, but many of those videos are only available in streaming flash versions, although downloads for those are promised to “be available within 30 days.” Thirty days from when is not indicated.

As warned by Gaydemon’s reviewer, it's good to be very aware of the pre-checked boxes for trial subscriptions to other sites on the sign-up page. Besides the 2 obvious ones at the bottom of the main page, there’s a sneaky 3rd one that pops up on a separate "you’re almost finished” page after clicking the “compete this order” button. Like the small print on all contracts, things don't get much more unfair and underhanded than that.

A full subscription to Rookie Guys may have been $39.95 per month when the site was reviewed, but it is now more reasonably priced at $29.95. Still somewhat steep, there IS a lot of bang for the buck on this site. But oh, how much bigger that bang would be if ONLY more of what’s going on in many of the videos could be more plainly seen.

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