If you grew up on Vivid flicks, you'd know the name Vivid stands for high-production values, exotic locales, contract girls, and big name directors like Paul Thomas and Chi Chi La Rue (it also stands for silicone tits and lame acting, but that's another story). Vivid.com offers an entire archive of films produced by Vivid, but it's slightly dissappointing that the videos are stream only and bitrates are capped at around 400 kb/s.

Vivid Pics: Tiny but You Get a Bucket Load

Vivid's pics are small, measuring at an average of 800x525. The photos aren't categorized by gallery, making navigation combersome. There are 65 thumbs on each page, slowing down gallery page loads. The photos are also right-click protected which prevents you from downloading any of the pics (unless you're savvy enough to know how to disable javascript).

There's a model index with a list of Vivid contract girls, like Sunrise Adams, Monique Alexander, and Savana Samson. You also have access to Vivid's Movie Pix (photos taken on the set during their movie shoots), Behind the Scenes Photos (expect to see dudes with video cameras standing next to a couple fucking, or a pornstar chugging on a bottle of spring water), Vivid Press Photos (candid pics of Vivid girls signing stuff at AVN), and Webcam Stills (pics of girls taken during webcams). There are also loads of non-Vivid pornstar pics, featuring stars like Alana Evans, Anastasia Blue, and Ashley Long. I found the Behind the Scenes photos the most interesting, but on the whole, Vivid's photos are just not big enough by today's standards.

Vivid Videos

Vivid unfortunately comes up short in the video department. First, Vivid videos are stream only, which limits bitrate to low 400 kb/s range. When server load is high, buffering is a problem. QuickTime is my favorite format here, since I can download videos via progressive download. That eliminates the buffering problem, and picture quality is pretty good at default 320x240 resolution, but frame rate tends to be inconsistent.

Vivid has amassed over 637 full-length feature flicks from recent releases like True Porn Fiction starring Monique Alexander all the way back to Oral Addiction starring Christy Canyon. You'll find some hot Vivid classics in the mix, like Crazed 2, starring Hypatia Lee. However, there's a tendency for recent Vivid movies to repeatedly reuse the same pornstar and stud cock, and most of the acting is a struggle to sit through.

Vivid Girls

There are over 60 Vivid contract girls featured in Vivid.com, including famous chicks like Jenna Jameson, Janine Lindemulder, Taylor Hayes, and Jennifer Stewart. Speaking of Janine, you can check out her new boy+girl flicks like Janine's Got Male, The Villa, and Maneater. You'll also see recent recruits like Monique Alexander, who used to be strictly softcore / girl+girl but now has gone completely hardcore.

Vivid: Bonus Content

Vivid showers you with loads of bonus goodies from content providers like Hustler, Ten.com, secontent, and fullonvideo. Hustler plugin feeds have always been my favorites, though fullonvideo has got some decent MOV downloads, and secontent has large size pics you can browse.

You also get access to other bonus sites from Vivid, including Tickled Pink, Vivid Amateurs, XXX Asian Hardcore, Black Booty Lounge, Butt Hunger, Nineteen.com, and The Black Pack. However, most of these sites are clones of Vivid, with just a handful of unique photo content on each site.

Vivid: Final Judgement

Vivid.com's biggest strength is its huge line of exclusive full-length feature films. Sleek site design doesn't hurt either. If you go for the 9 bucks a month option, you're getting a fair deal. The most glaring problem with Vivid is mediocre video quality, which is just too bad for a site that should be one of the best adult video sites on the net.