Review date: December 2011

Channel 1 Releasing -- aka C1R.com -- is Chi Chi LaRue's home planet and, in reality, more of a vehicle for upsells than an actual destination in and of itself. If you're a fan of archived live shows then you'll be happy here, but if you're looking for DVD scenes, you get only about 80 per month (5 movies a week), they stream only, and many are quite old. If you want to skip the questionable value of C1R and enjoy a large cache of Rascal, Catalina and All Worlds streams you really should check out Channel 1's Male Vault instead; same goes for Dirk Yates

Tour

Click the Tour button at the top right of the page to find a description of what you'll get with a "Premium" membership, though it does gloss over the fact that the weekly movies stream only and none of them are recent. Also it says there are live live shows (not just archived) and there don't seem to have been any new ones since March, 2011.

Usability

Once you accept that much of the site is dedicated to getting you to shell out more money to either buy DVDs or pay-per-view videos, it's pretty easy to navigate. The buttons across the top of each page show the various content areas, including the "Member's Area" which has a drop-down for the homepage, the Live and Raw show archive, the Dirk Yates Live archive, and the current five free full-length DVD titles included with your membership. Other buttons across the top are for the VOD, the store, and the model index.

The Men and the Action

The model index lists a whopping 6400 men, from jarheads, to muscle guys, and from preppy gym rats to smooth twinks, but many are missing headshots and the index often leads to an upsell. As for the type of action, the Live show format is always the same: put a guy on a bed or a chair in front of a camera. Rarely does the camera change position or zoom in for close-ups. Often there is a one-side conversation as the model talks about stuff like what bar he just danced in, or how big his feet are. Some times the guy is inspired, horny, or really creative. Other times he's lackluster and the minutes pass slowly. Nature of the beast. But let's say the guy is really hot, has a big dick, and decides to work a large dildo into his butt. Or he's paired up with another guy and the two have a really amazing scene together. In the giant C1R live show archive it is possible to find the good stuff, but be warned some of them are over two hours long -- and recorded without sound.

Video Details

The live show videos made in the last couple of years are in an embedded Flash 10 player and they look excellent. Technique, lighting, and video encoding are not an issue. The older the video, the more likely the quality is compromised by one thing or another. Both the newer C1R videos and the newer Dirk Yates videos are the best in this collection.

CIR membership includes 20 video titles in a month: five per week, which are then replaced by another five. That means that on any given week you have a total of 20-25 scenes selected for you from the All Worlds, Catalina and Rascal catalogs.

The live show archives are extensive, with almost 1,700 porn star shows from Live and Raw and 795 rough-and-ready amateurs from Dirk Yates Live. These shows can run from 90 minutes to 3 hours. New live shows seem to have stopped in spring of 2011.

The other video you are entitled to is 30 free VOD minutes per month. You'll find that this goes by in a flash. You also get thousands of hardcore DVD trailers, which can be a turn-on, but are designed to tease.

It's useful to compare what some of the leading studio sites are offering these days. Falcon gives you streaming access to over 250 full-length videos, Titan to over 160, Lucas Entertainment over 100. CR1 has taken a different approach, providing 20 of its 900 titles in a given month, assuming the large live show archive will keep you happy. As mentioned, you'll find a lot more video in C1R's Male Vault and Dirk Yates.

Image and Other Content

CR1 hosts thousands of images in galleries which are accessed via the model index. Image sizes vary a lot, but they were usually quite sharp and clear. Sadly, a large watermark is placed across every single one of them and the navigation buttons float right over the image.

User-friendliness

Because of the constant upselling on this site, we have deducted a point from the Fairness score.

Summing Up

C1R provides monthly members with a small selection of streaming DVD content, along with a very large archive of live shows. You also get 30 free minutes of VOD time and lots and lots of pictures. If you like the idea of being able to watch major porn stars, along with Dirk Yates' sexy young marines, in intimate recorded cam shows, then C1R is an option. But if you want to see scenes from All Worlds, Rascal Video, and Catalina porn releases over the years, Male Vault and Dirk Yates are a better bet.

30 day: $24.95 (rebills @ $24.95)

Visit Channel 1 Releasing Now!