Overview:
As Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Well, as strongly as I’m inclined to agree with the guy on the $100 bill, there are a few other certainties or near-certainties that are worth mentioning. First of all, you can expect that there will always be a line of 20 or more people at Pink’s Hot Dogs in Hollywood (it’s a national icon, after all); you can guarantee that Nintendo will never abandon the Super Mario Bros; men will always feel like their female significant other is cramping their “game” but won’t be willing to give up the somewhat consistent blowjobs a relationship affords them; and women will always misunderstand men, resorting to labeling them as oafish morons who are only concerned with sports, barbecue, beer, and sex (which isn’t to say they’d be incorrect, however). Maybe Ben Franklin wasn’t as forward thinking as we thought, or maybe he was just riding high after signing the Declaration of Independence with his drinking buddies. In the porn world, there are also a few widely recognized certainties: Ava Devine will always fuck like a monster; Audrey Hollander will always shove something into her anus; Joanna Angel will always prefer rough and tumble sex with “alternative” guys and girls; and Peter North’s cumshots will always be hefty (even on an “off” day). One certainty that has only been evident for a short while, and one that does not, incidentally, pertain to any particular individual performer, is that VideoBox will most likely always be one of the top ranking porn sites on the ‘net.

Having established its dominance over other pornographic video sites in early 2005, VideoBox has continued to redefine what people expect from an online porn service. Doing away with pay-per-view and streaming-only delivery methods, lowering the monthly membership price, and offering multiple downloadable and streamable video formats for both Mac and PC users, VideoBox quickly became synonymous with online pornography - at least among horny nerds. But what of those horny nerds who weren’t into women? After all, it is generally accepted that between 4% and 10% of the US population identify themselves as homosexual; surely they want a high quality, low cost online porn site, too! That’s why, in early 2007, VideoBox launched their gay site - the appropriately, if unimaginatively, named VideoBox Men. Now, with over one thousand DVD titles in their collection, the VideoBox Men team should have a surefire winner on their hands. After all, they aced their straight porn effort and the only difference between their previous success and VideoBox Men is the number of penises and vaginas – more of the former, none of the latter. So if you’re after some affordable, accessible, enjoyable gay hardcore action, you could do a lot worse than give VideoBox Men a quick once over. After all, their tour page promises more than 5000 scenes, 1000 performers, and 50 genre categories, and a new DVD every day. How’s that for an enticing proposition?

Once inside the VideoBox Men members’ area, you’ll immediately be faced with a number of browsing options. There’s a main menu bar sitting at the top of the page that directs you to such sections as Home, Categories (a drop-down text list), New DVDs, Top Scenes This Week, Stars, Studios, and Series. Each of these will give you a pictorial index of all the applicable DVDs, but you can also view the content as individual scenes instead. Also on the main page is a long list of all the genres and categories available in the archive. Ranging from Amateur, Autofellatio, and Asian to Watersports, White, and Wrestling – with others like White Collar, Nipple Play, Military, Fisting, Daddy, Cowboy/Western, Breeding, and Bears also included – there’s bound to be something to suit almost every gay porn fan with a fetish. Clicking on these categories will open a list of all hosted content that features the selected act or theme. Above the main menu sits another group of tabs, these ones taking you to VideoBox Men’s supplementary material and additional features. Automatically generated Recommendations are a great way to find something new and fresh to devour; the Extras page points you towards some other sites of interest; and My VideoBox Men allows you to manage a list of your favorite scenes and titles, ensuring you’ll never have to search and search for something you wish you’d bookmarked. The most prominent feature of the home page, however, is the Newest DVDs display. With a countdown telling you exactly how long until the next update, you’ll never miss a beat (or beat-off!) here. Each freshly added title is previewed by a DVD cover image, title, rating (out of five stars), list of categories, and the date of upload. The single newest title also gives a full cast list, studio information, and a brief synopsis of the action. Further down the page, you’ll find some recommended DVDs and scenes as well as a tally of the total number in the archive. You can even browse the whole collection by date or popularity from the Quick Links panel. At this point, it’s probably best to jump right into some fucking action. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit antsy in my pantsies.

As someone down the street is making a hell of a racket - could it be a massive drum circle run through a PA system? – I click on Beyond Malibu, VideoBox Men’s newest addition to their already throbbing collection, and settle in for some steamy, sexually explicit footage. After all the cast lists, studio brandings, and synopses are out of the way, you’ll see six preview thumbnails for each of the DVD’s scenes. It’s great to find that one of my favorite VideoBox features has been carried over to their gay site – when you hover your mouse over each thumbnail, you’ll be given some great previewing options. Quick Preview plays a few seconds of footage represented by the thumbnail; Start Here allows you to begin streaming the full movie from the displayed point onwards; and Custom Clip takes you straight to a page that allows you to select only the specific moments from a given scene to be downloaded or streamed. That’s great news for impatient users who don’t really care about where a guy’s from or what his first sexual experience was like. Beneath the thumbs lie the main download and streaming buttons. Play Now and Custom Clip (there it is again) are fairly self-explanatory; the stream that plays after clicking the Play Now button looks great and loads very quickly; it also features a side-scrolling filmstrip-style timeline that makes jumping forward or backwards to any given moment a breeze.

The download options available to members are as follows: WMV DVD at 640x480 pixels, WMV High at 480x352, WMV Med at 320x240, H.264  (that’s an MP4 file, folks) at 640x480, and iPhone (another MP4) at 320x240. Underneath each button, you’ll also find the file size, which is great for those concerned about their dwindling hard drive space. More scene details are listed here – cast, duration, categories – as well as a review section that allows you to read what other members think of a given scene and to add your own comments, should you feel like it. The downloadable videos, while not exactly the best and brightest of the ‘net, are definitely very watchable and should be hi-res enough for most users. (A resolution of 640x480 often fails to cut it, but here it looks great.) Still, it’d be awesome to see an upgrade to true High Definition in the near future; but that would, of course, be reliant on the original studios shooting in HD. Speaking of the studios, it should be pointed out that none of the content on VideoBox Men is exclusive and it all comes from a wide variety of different studios, so you might end up seeing it online at other sites, too. The actual sex shown in these videos ranges from light softcore to full-on brutal gangbangs and bondage. Whatever your taste in porn, you’re bound to find at least a handful of videos here that tickle your horny bone.

A membership to VideoBox Men will set you back either $15.96 or $23.96 per month, depending on whether or not you want DVD resolution videos. While this setup – paying extra for DVD resolution – could be seen as a way to screw average customers, I’m inclined to think it’s a great way of doing business. Put it this way…most porn sites cost upwards of thirty bucks a month, so VideoBox Men is already a bargain at $24. If your pockets are too tight, though, you can always drop down to sixteen bucks a month and enjoy everything premium members do, just at a lower resolution. You’re not missing out on any content or services, merely seeing everything in a slightly lower resolution. Sounds pretty fair, right?

All this typing and looking at porn is making me hungry…for food. So, as I prepare to devour what’s left of last night’s spaghetti, please join me for a few tasty treats in the Pros and Cons section before I stuff my face…with food!

Pros:
- A new DVD every day is a pretty sweet deal. That’s seven new titles a week, men!

- With an already large archive of content that grows larger each and every day, you’re bound to find a bunch of hot stuff to stroke it to.

- Premium membership is affordable at $23.96 and gets even cheaper if you don’t mind ditching the DVD quality videos.

- Navigation can play a huge role in customer satisfaction and VideoBox Men has that component of their site totally nailed.

Cons:
- Unfortunately, VideoBox Men doesn’t feature all the bells and whistles available on the straight VideoBox. No blog? Bummer, dude.

- VideoBox Men also has less content than the straight site, but hopefully they’ll continue to update every day and maybe increase their schedule.

- The content is not exclusive.

- It’d be great to see some High Definition content added to the site, even if it ends up costing a couple of dollars more.

Conclusion:
With the outstanding success of VideoBox, VideoBox Men has been dealt a pretty tough task: to make a name for itself in the gay porn community without hiding behind its big brother’s shadow. While VideoBox Men is by no means a failure, there’s definitely room for improvement. The straight VideoBox site has a number of additional features available to members, including an extremely entertaining and informative blog, which VideoBox Men currently lacks. This makes Men seem less friendly and inviting than the straight Box, but doesn’t impact too heavily on the actual content or presentation, which is fantastic. DVDs and scenes come from a wide variety of studios and the action is generally very hot and bound to please anyone looking for some sexy guy-on-guy fucking. With everything from solo masturbation and softcore sex to gangbangs and fetish-themed scenes, most users will be very happy with what they fine here. Membership is also quite affordable and, if you’re not desperate for the best quality vids, you can save an additional eight dollars by ditching the DVD quality option. All in all, VideoBox Men is definitely one of the best gay porn sites out there, so give it a look!