Content
- Is content updated?: Yes
- Last Content Update: 20/12/2010
- Dates only on most recent content. Looks like multiple weekly video updates with an occational gallery update.
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Athletic Model Guild celebrates the classic male physique, and offers pics, videos and other content of the Guild which has been in existence since 1945.
Athletic Model Guild is up for review today, and it's a pretty unique and interesting site overall, mostly because of how different it is. The bodybuilder/muscular niche is a nice departure from the norm, but they go even beyond that. A lot of the stuff you'll see here seems to be older material, which is why you're signing up for the "classic" section of their site on this one. They have shot all their own material for decades, and put a lot of it into a line of DVDs they offer. There are dudes in pretty weird undies doing some funky wrestling moves from back in the 60's. There's also the required nudes, but their gay DVD archive is where most of the content is at. It's an odd collection and assortment in the end, but maybe it's up your alley. Fans of theirs should already be members here in my opinion, so I'm mostly looking at the site as a new users of theirs. $25 gets you in for the first month, but that drops to $20 a month after that.
Not only do they delve into the bodybuilding and muscular niche here, they take it a step further. A lot of this material seems pretty old, so you're getting a glimpse of these hot, built guys back when they were a little more pure in their fitness.
Once you add in the pretty large collection of hardcore gay DVDs to the exclusive content section, you have quite a bit to see here. I couldn't quite count it up myself, but expect several hundred video clips at minimum, which is a great start.
Unless you're familiar with the company, it's a little tough to tell from an average user's standpoint, but all of their content is exclusive here that they shoot themselves. The section labeled as exclusive is actually their web-exclusive content that's never been seen elsewhere. Their other collections are available on DVD, but it's still all their own content at least.
The design of the site is pretty nice, with some clean looks and nice colors.
Anywhere you go here, the videos are all streaming-only unfortunately. There are no downloads available, and there's only the Flash streaming option. It comes in two sizes, but the larger one isn't "HD" as labeled of course. If they can't do downloads, I'd at least like a few different streaming options (WMV, Flash, several quality levels for each).
You're kinda browsing around through their dates and categories, and many of them aren't even in order (check out the exclusive section with the dates and all). From there, all the clips from a DVD are listed on a single page, and they play right there in that page, which makes things cluttered. Most DVD sites have the actual video scene playing on its own page, which cleans things up a bit.
The quality of the videos here was a little subpar in my opinion, with more compression than we're used to seeing. It may be partly due to the streaming option, but we've seen some great streaming as well. The pictures are extremely tiny at 600x520, which isn't good either. Plus, most of the material seems to be older, which means part of the problem is the nature of the beast here.
The video layout was annoying enough for me to get its own response here. I really don't like the videos playing right on the same page as the rest of the gallery listing. It's made even worse since they try to drag the video to the top of the page when it starts playing, so you have to scroll way up to see it again. It's weird.
A lot of the content is older here, which affects the quality (see above), plus just the style of site it is. Don't come here expecting 2010 bodybuilders in action, and you should be okay.
There are no zip files available here for the photo galleries, which may be annoying for some.
There are no update dates on the content inside the member's area. Their tour offers up the latest three update dates in each section, but that's pretty minimal in terms of information.
Athletic Model Guild offers up a pretty different collection, and it didn't quite work for me overall. However, looking at the numbers and stuff, they are actually doing well. They have quite a bit to see, update pretty often, offer up a nice-looking site, have all-exclusive content, and don't charge too much. I'd love to see a few more navigation options, and I'd love to change the video setup somehow (if they want to stick with streaming, at least put the videos on their own page). Look around the tour at the older content (and the wide variety) and see if it's up your alley. I'm more used to today's high-tech sites with fresh content, so it didn't quite work for me. However, if you like what you see, I think they give you a decent amount for your money here. Fans of AMG already know what they're in for, and should have a great time here.