Review date: December 2011

With little fanfare Chi Chi La Rue's Channel 1 Releasing has launched a one-price streaming video site, a grab bag of video scenes from its All Worlds, Dirk Yates, Catalina and Rascal Videos catalog. But while there are over 1700 scenes to choose from and the quality is quite good, for some reason they don't tell you the movie title or studio the scenes come from, which contributes to the site's overall tube-like look and feel. While the video streams only, it will play on mobile devices.

Tour

Male Vault's free area is a bare-bones version of the scene and model indexes, with a single thumbnail per scene and disabled "Play" and "Info" buttons. Not a single sample clip is provided.

Usability

In the left column is a list of categories such as Military, Twink etc. to choose from. There is no keyword search box but there is a model index. What is most irritating is the lack of information about a scene. They don't tell you what movie it's from or what studio, there is no way to group together all of the scenes from a particular DVD, and there's not a single box cover on the site.

The Men and the Action

The studios here are All Worlds, Catalina Video, Rascal Video, and Dirk Yates. There is a very large variety of men, anything you could wish for. Each scene is uncut, and many of them have full sets, story lines and dialogue.

Video Details

The videos are all from one of four studios, and all were previously released on DVD or in some cases videocassette. Quality depends a lot on the age of the video, but for the most part they are pretty good. The newest movies, some shot with an HD camera, have excellent playback quality, but some of the older scenes are over-saturated with color and have a murky look to them. All the videos are professionally lit and have a variety of camera angles, poses, and a range of close-up and medium shots.

The site currently offers 1700 video scenes but seems to update only evey couple of weeks (updates do not have dates on them). You can only stream, so no downloads here at all.

Image and Other Content

There are no image galleries.

Summing Up

Channel 1 Releasing has, in our opinion, a ways to go with their web presence. On the one hand they have C1R.com which offers lots of teasers along with non-stop upsells for $29.95; on the other they have Male Vault which has tons of well-shot content but has been stripped of personality and resembles a tube site. At least they did revive Dirk Yates as a stand alone site, something military lovers will enjoy.

14 day: $9.95 (rebills @ $29.95)

30 day: $29.95 (rebills @ $29.95)

Visit Male Vault Now!