PU - Diabolic - New Reviews

Diabolic Review

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:08:22 PDT

Diabolic (1)

09-25-09 10:08am

REVIEW = 50 by rearadmiral (141)

Pros:
- Diabolic is one of the best studios around
- Access to about half of their titles
- Several updates a week
- File sizes are large and look good
- Download speeds are on par with the competition (but file sizes are significantly larger)

Cons:
- The website appears to have undergone a major re-work, and it is either really buggy or is still under development
- Videos all stutter, sometimes it really detracts from the scene
- Many dead links
- No obvious support for customers � three tries to contact them got nothing
- Some scenes are missing from movies
- Many scenes have watermarks, some are small, some have watermarks that are huge and block a good portion of the screen
- No star name associated with many scenes
- Notwithstanding the many dead links, only about half or less of the Diabolic library is online

Bottom Line:
This is my second time taking a membership at Diabolic. It appears that they may be undergoing a major re-work. I can�t say that for sure because my three emails for support were never replied to. I deduced the re-work theory from comparing the current site to the most recent review.

The biggest problem (assuming they are in the middle of a major overhaul) is that the site just isn�t ready for public use yet. Most of the older scenes I specifically joined to get have dead links. At the time I joined around 40% of the links were dead. (I didn�t test all of them, but I noted that every movie that shows it has had zero downloads has dead links, so I counted all the zero download movies.)

If the site is being overhauled, maybe some of the above will be fixed. Regardless of that though, there are some larger issues. I download the wmv versions, which are all large and look generally great. They are listed as HD. But they all (yes, all) have these annoying stutters. Sometimes it isn�t too bad, but other times it can get really annoying. Some of the stutters can last a few seconds.

I�m also not a fan of the site navigation. Each page shows 12 DVDs that are available. You select one that you want and that loads a page that shows the scenes in that movie. Under each scene are the options to watch it online, download it, or build you own. Hitting any of those options will bring you to another page (that frequently crashes) where you select how you want to do what you want to do. As in how do you want to view or download the file. Maybe I�m, being fussy, but having to drill down through three pages to download the file seems like one page too many. Maybe I�m just being fussy because I�m frustrated with all the other problems.

I have no idea why the site is as bad as it is. Maybe Diabolic is in its final days like someone here suggested (I hope not) or maybe they just don�t put the effort into web sales because they don�t see them as important. It seems to me that web sales are the future. I haven�t rented or bought a DVD in two years � everything is online now. I�m sure I�m not the only person who finds the web a more convenient place to get my porn. If so, Diabolic has to get in the game better than this. Adding to this concern is that Diabolic is updating the site a few times a week, but there are still well over a hundred titles that have never been added.

Diabolic has been one of my favorite studios for years. I really hope that they resolve the problems with their website because without it they�ll have no place in the online porn market.

And in the past I took it as a positive sign that the webmaster responded to concerns. Not so any more. Twice I contacted them through normal channels, and once through the email here at PU. Nothing in the two weeks since.

My recommendation is to avoid Diabolic until we have some assurances that the problems are fixed.

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Diabolic Review

Wed, 06 May 2009 18:00:11 PDT

Diabolic (1)

05-06-09 06:00pm

REVIEW = 81 by james4096 (126)

Pros:
- You get to watch Diabolic's DVD's soon after they are released for sale.
- The videos are good.
- No more DRM. No download limit.
- Newest video definition is very good.
- Picture gallery for each scene(screenshots) and photo shoots for each movie. Rare for a DVD site.
- No watermarks

Cons:
- Every video file you download is named "90.wmv" which is very annoying.
- The navigation has problems
- Only 1 format/size of video download
- Older videos are lower quality
- A little pricey for the amount of content and updates
- No zips for the photos

Bottom Line:
This is the official site of Diabolic Video and it boasts 361 movies with 2,434 scenes. It seems to me that they have most of the Diabolic catalog available for download. When they release a new DVD it is available in the member's area in 3 to 5 days.

A new DVD is added every Friday and the photos for the movie are added on Monday. That's not enough updates in my opinon.

The videos quality ranges from 400x300, 618kbps for the old ones to 1920x1080 7235kpbs for the latest, and then everything in between. The videos are only offered in either 3 qualities of streaming or 1 size wmv.

There are about 250 photo shots from the videos each with about 50 pics, and the most recent photos are 1200x800. There are screenshots for each scene that look pretty bad. No zip file downloads.

A major annoyance has to do with the navigation. Whenever you view the list of actresses you are presented with DVD covers of a movie they are in and not a photo of the actress. Occasionally the actress will be the one on the cover, but most of the time it's not the case. I like to see what an actress looks like if I have never heard of her. They have a search which is good but they don't give you an option to search for a performer from the start. Also I encountered some mislabeled scenes.

As far as extras go there are some short behind the scenes videos and casting pics. Some of it isn't bad.

It costs 34.95 to subscribe, and while it may be more expensive and there are less DVD's than say videobox, these videos are more consistent and predictable(not necessarily a bad thing). I don't believe many of the newer ones are available anywhere else. If you like Diabolic's style of gonzo videos, then for subscribe for one month and check back later. Before you join browse through on the preview area and see the videos they have and decide if it's worth it.

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Diabolic Review

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:50:53 PST

Diabolic (1)

02-14-09 01:50pm

REVIEW = 83 by TrashMan (103)

Pros:
+Supports download managers
+Very low overlap, then again the library is limited (see cons)
+All dvds list addition date and the street release date
+Multiple streaming formats (low, med, high), but the download is only the HIGH version. If you want the low or med versions you have copy the stream link (which is not hidden by any means) and use any of your favorite stream recording program to obtain it. Nothing out of bounds here because Diabolic makes no attempt to hide anything, which is great.
+All scenes come with over 100 screencaps
+Excellent job of tagging pornstars
+Pornstar directory
+A lot of DVDs have HQ picture galleries (that aren't just screencaps) on the "Picture Galleries" page, however...(see cons)
+BTS videos separated from DVDs on a separate page
+The update calendar is very original. You can go back to any month and click on any update day to see additions.
+They dont skimp on scenes - e.g. all mini scenes from No Swallowing Allowed are available.
+No watermarks!

Cons:
-Its Diabolic's DVD site, so only the studio's DVDs are offered. So overlap is low, but it makes for a very small library (~350), it also makes for bad update schedule
-Update schedule is crap. 2 updates a week - a picture gallery on monday and a DVD addition on friday. This is just the nature of a studio-owned site - there is only so much stuff they can add, once they add all their old stuff they are left with adding stuff as they produce it. Most recent additions are from 2008-2009.
-HQ Picture galleries are not linked on the DVD's respective page.
-No ZIP downloads for picture galleries, either for the HQ or just the screencaps.
-Most recent updates are not available for download, only linked to the store to buy it. It takes about 2 weeks before the goods appear (stream/download links, screencaps, etc.).
-Series drop down menu lacks a few series which are in the DVD listing
-Trial is cheap ($1) but full membership is well overpriced ($35/mo)
-Older movies have lower res (see BL)

Bottom Line:
Overall, it is a good site which provided most, if not all of Diabolic's material. So if you find a girl you like and you see a Diabolic film on her IAFD page, more likely than not you will find that movie on this site.

The overlap is low (if not 0) with sites like VideoBox and VideosZ because those sites don't lease Diabolic content (I'm pretty sure of this). The problem is that Diabolic's film library is so small that they have already added all their movies to the site's library and there is not much left to add. The movies they are adding are movies which are being released for commercial consumption (production dates of 2008-2009). And this is why it makes the membership price so overpriced - you are paying 3.5x as much as VideoBox for not even 10% the library size.

Must miss? Nah, just more of a site where you buy membership only once a YEAR. Usually I'd say for some sites to buy once every few months, but Diabolic is not even worthy of purchasing that often, there are just not enough updates to warranty that. 52DVD's are added a year (assuming they are capable of maintaining that schedule since they are adding DVD's as they produce them), an amount which VideoBox adds in under 2 weeks.

Places where I docked: small library and outrageous price, mostly price (because the small library is the nature of these studio sites).

Some other notes...
*Every movie added prior to March 25, 2007 uses the old, poorer encoding WMV. Movies added after this date have a "High" resolution of 640x480, while those prior either have 400x300 or 480x360 (there is no consistency with the 400x300 or 480x360, one movie will be 300p and the next will be 360p and then the next will be 300p. It is just a crapshoot with what you get).
*You can organize the DVD list by date added to the site, street date or by title. It is a little hard to find the DVD list, but it is in the pull-down menu for "Choose Series", the first option ("ALL Movies").
*The pornstar directory uses misleading pictures. Below each girl you see the cover of a movie they are in, so you think that the girl on the cover is the girl you want, but it isn't. I wish they would use headshots, but I'm not going to dock them for not doing so.
*No watermarks is a blessing. Other studio sites use watermarks, which suck. Devils Film uses watermarks, Anabolic uses watermarks, etc.
*Every DVD has high(er) res DVD covers. It is nice, but they aren't terribly high quality, but are better quality than you will find on VOD sites.
*At the bottom of the page for each DVD there are links to every other movie in the series. Which leads me to another point, they never miss a movie in a series. If there are 10 movies in a series, all 10 are on the site, which should be expected for a studio site (let alone one with a small library).

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Diabolic Review

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:23:30 PST

Diabolic (1)

02-01-08 11:23am

REVIEW = 80 by asmith12 (124)

Pros:
+ full Diabolic videos
+ videos are often released on site almost simultaneously with DVD releases
+ tons of videos
+ production quality (setups, lighting, cameraguy work) is extremely good (not surprising for Diabolic videos)
+ frequent updates

Cons:
- even newer videos are of not that good encoding quality (640x480x1.5MBit/s); while appropriate for some other stuff, Diabolic videos suffer from it greatly
- video quality of old videos is really low (400x300x650kBit/s)
- content within the same series is repetitive and soon becomes boring
- girls aren't always pretty (not that surprising for this kind of content, but Diabolic could probably do better)
- swindling attempt by Diabolic/Epoch (see my comment)

Bottom Line:
I should say that as a strange side effect of subscribing to this site I became a bit disappointed not about this site, but about Diabolic as a movie studio. While their movies are of really good quality (setups, lighting, cameraguy work) especially by adult web standards, seeing all of them in one place reveals that there are quite few themes and most of them quickly become quite repetitive.

Other than that, there is not much to say in addition to TBP site facts. Yes, they are full Diabolic videos, yes, there are lots of them, yes, they're released to the site very close to releasing DVDs, but quality isn't nearly that good that you'll get on DVD (and for Diabolic videos you will see the difference, it's NOT homemade production which doesn't suffer from encoding); older videos are of measly 400x300, newer are 640x480 but I've seen better encoding at this resolution, in particular color balance looks very degraded compared to Diabolic DVDs). Sex (as usual for Diabolic) is on rough side, with lots of anal/DP/A2M and other such stuff, but girls aren't always really pretty (not too surprising, but Diabolic could probably do better).

Bottom line: could be really good site for Diabolic fans or fans of professionally shot rough porn, but only if you don't care too much about encoding quality. Personally I'd prefer to see less videos and/or only older ones, but of significantly higher quality.

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Diabolic Review

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:10:42 PST

Diabolic (1)

12-18-07 07:10pm

REVIEW = 82 by drphil (5)

Pros:
Streaming videos good quality.
Good site design.
Easy site to browse.
Downloadable video quality recently improved.
Customer service quick to respond.

Cons:
Updates are few and far between.
Download speed could be better.
Pop-ups on exit.
Price is a fairly high for amount of content currently available.

Bottom Line:
Recently some changes were made to the website that compelled my to edit my review. My first impressions were marred by the poor video quality however the video quality has dramatically improved. Given this factor and the fact that the website listens to its customer base, my opinion of the site has risen. Having a site read and respond to our opinions on this forum is I think what we all want and I commend them for that.
Overall I think this is one of the better studio-backed websites out there. I do have some minor issues with the slowness of updates, but once their archive has a chance to expand I think the high price could come to look more reasonable.

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Diabolic Review

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 18:39:59 PST

Diabolic (1)

12-13-07 06:39pm

REVIEW = 80 by rearadmiral (141)

Pros:
Diabolic is one of the best studios out there and this gives access to a large part of their catalogue

No DRM on downloads. Kudos to Diabolic for being on the leading edge of this long-needed trend.

Streaming at your choice of speeds

Easy searches by series title, genre or star

Cons:
Within individual movies the star's name frequently is wrong. If you're looking for a particular star the star search will get you to the movie but you may need to look at the thumbnails to get the right scene

Download speeds can vary from average to painfully slow

Bottom Line:
(EDIT December 22, 2007 - I can confirm that the larger file sizes are now available. In my opinion, this puts Diabolic among the best sites on the web.)

In my opinion, Diabolic is one of the best studios operating today. Their material is consistently good. You may not like a particular genre, but you at least know that they do that genre well. They have some excellent gonzo material with a raw edge that doesn't push the envelope as far as some others do. Technically their work is excellent - always good lighting and editing. And they always have the best and brightest stars in the biz in their movies.

The site is well done. There are multiple ways to search: genre, series titles, individual titles and stars. Download speeds are good.

If you're a fan of excellent porn with beautiful women who don't seem to know the word 'no' this site can have a bit of a 'kid in a candy store' effect. I'm not shilling here - I found the quantity of stuff so overwhelming that I browsed longer than I would at other sites before downloading. This is certain to be a long-term membership.

There seems to be a debate about value. In my opinion this is a great value at the price. I really like Diabolic's stuff so the price seems more than fair to me.

I give full marks to a studio with the balls to let us download their stuff.

Follow-Up:
Now that the 'new car' lustre is gone I'd like to make a few comments. This is still an excellent site in terms of content, but the download speeds are TERRIBLE. You need to use an accelerator but that adds to the cost. I emailed the webmaster to ask if there was a problem on their end and got no reply.

If you like Diabolic's stuff this is a great site, but you will need an accelerator.

I also had some trouble cancelling my membership.

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Diabolic Review

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:34:14 PST

Diabolic (1)

12-07-07 11:34am

REVIEW = 90 by GooMa (1)

Pros:
Exclusive video content
Seems like all Diabolic titles are in there
Nice picture galleries
Cheap trial
NO DRM downloads

Cons:
Monthly price is a bit high

Bottom Line:
I thought this site was great in comparison to most other video production company sites. You can download or stream all the movies/scenes (looks like the just up'd the size of the quality of the download files too), easy to use, crazy amount of search capibilities, fast servers and it's updated with new titles all the time. Much improved over the previous diabolic.com site.

As a fan of Diabolic movies, there newer content has greatly improved over the past 6 months (looks like it shot better, cleaner and higher production value) and I think there all new site works well for them.

Over all, a great site for a great company.

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