Test: Erotic-Lounge.com

Telekom’s porn video on demand portal: Erotic-Lounge.com

Telekom also wants to get a big slice of the „video on demand“ pie. In con­junc­tion with the T‑Online por­tal, the „pink giant“ has laun­ched the video-on-demand (VoD) por­tal Erotic-lounge.com espe­ci­al­ly for the ero­tic sec­tor, in addi­ti­on to GamesLoad, VideoLoad and MusicLoad.

The online porn libra­ry curr­ent­ly con­ta­ins over 7,000 ero­tic films that can be view­ed as a stream for 24 hours, and some can even be down­loa­ded to the user’s own hard drive.

Just like bluvista.tv, erotic-lounge.de has recei­ved various awards: „Best Soft VoD Site 2008, 2009, 2010“, „Best VoD Offer National 2010, 2011“, „Best HD Offer inter­na­tio­nal 2010“, „Best Erotic Blog 2010“ and the „VENUS Award 2011 for the best VoD site in Germany“. Our test (from the point of view of the acti­ve porn con­su­mer) will show who real­ly is the best and whe­ther the cer­ti­fi­ca­ti­ons were not eva­lua­ted some­what one-sidedly!

Unfortunately, this test report has beco­me a bit lon­ger com­pared to other VoD reviews – But there is more to tell about Erotic-Lounge.com.

Opinion about the preview area of Erotic-Lounge.com

The pre­view area of Erotic-lounge.com gives the porn-interested a rela­tively good insight, what awaits him on the web­site. The empha­sis is on „rela­tively“, becau­se the pro­ject is abso­lut­e­ly „water­tight“ from a youth pro­tec­tion point of view. At first, one only finds soft­co­re movies.

In the left menu, the visi­tor finds seve­ral boxes that give an impres­si­on of what the FSK18 area might look like. There are movies for rent and for purcha­se lis­ted, one can fil­ter by actors, video labels (pro­du­cers) and view other soft­co­re offerings.

Advertising is spread throug­hout the site in mode­ra­ti­on. Beate Uhse, Praline, Coupe‘, Livecams, LiveStripCams, Playboy and num­e­rous other part­ners are among the advertisers.

You can feel that the makers of Erotic Lounge real­ly make an effort to put tog­e­ther inte­res­t­ing con­tent. However, no nor­mal man is satis­fied with the FSK16 crap and you ine­vi­ta­b­ly click on the FSK18 links. Mercilessly, you get the hor­ri­bly desi­gned NetGate paren­tal con­trol login page.

So, if you want to watch har­der por­no­gra­phy, you can’t avoid regis­tering with Erotic Lounge and Telekom- NetGate- AVS (age veri­fi­ca­ti­on system).

Rating of the porn sites registration

Registering Erotic-lounge.com is like an exci­ting, nerve-racking adven­ture: after each step, you don’t know wha­t’s coming next and you’­re con­stant­ly sur­pri­sed with new rest­ric­tions. You hop around among the wil­dest pop-up win­dows and designs, con­ti­nu­al­ly hoping that you will get through the aut­ho­riza­ti­on pro­ce­du­re as quick­ly as pos­si­ble wit­hout any errors.

But here are the individual facts 

Fresh and moti­va­ted, you click on the but­ton „Registration“ in the right menu. One lands in a NOCH clear input form, in which one enters its email address, pass­words and cont­act data. A gray secu­ri­ty code gra­phic with real­ly badly rea­da­ble let­ters is the first hurd­le. Step three is cli­cking a veri­fi­ca­ti­on link in the wel­co­me email 

After aut­ho­riza­ti­on, things real­ly get star­ted!
A mes­sa­ge appears „You have log­ged in for the first time. From now on you can purcha­se offers wit­hout age veri­fi­ca­ti­on in Erotik-Lounge“. How, where, what – I’m not even log­ged in yet? Well, a „Next“ but­ton reve­als that you can pro­ba­b­ly see FSK18 con­tent after a paren­tal con­trol check

In step 5 you have to log in with your access data. Now you land again on the Erotic-Lounge.de page and are gree­ted with a box that the regis­tra­ti­on was suc­cessful. But it says in the box „Want more? Access to the adult area 18+ con­ve­ni­ent­ly via E‑PIN. Apply now!“. No idea what an E‑PIN is, but you click on the but­ton „E‑PIN BEANTRAGEN“.

Step 7: Oops, ano­ther page! You have the choice bet­ween „Apply for adult PIN“ and „Watch a free movie“. You don’t even know where to click any­mo­re becau­se of all the adver­ti­sing!!! Erotic Lounge Blog? Halloween Special? Facebook, Netgate? Erotic Lounge on TV, pay­ment methods? HOW, WHERE WHAT?!?! So slow­ly the desi­re to shim­my fur­ther through it fades!

Ok, step 8: Let’s click on „REGISTER NOW FOR FREE“. YUCK! A white tele­com page opens. It says some­thing about „NetGate paren­tal con­trol sys­tem“ (Never heard of it).
Again 5 links! –
aah at the very bot­tom right the but­ton „Zur Anmeldung“!!!

Step 10: You have to enter all your data into a form field. In addi­ti­on, an e‑mail address and cell phone num­ber (pre­paid cell pho­nes do not work). And again links, links, links.

Then the cell phone beeps! Aaah, a PIN came by SMS. This must be ente­red in a form in the next step.

Step 12: WHAT IS THAT? Do you want to check your eli­gi­bi­li­ty via SCHUFA? Excuse me? What does a porn site have to do with my SCHUFA file!!!? As an alter­na­ti­ve, you can choo­se the PostIdent pro­ce­du­re: No bet­ter! Who wants to traip­se to the post office and have an embar­ras­sing iden­ti­ty card check car­ri­ed out?

OK, then the SCHUFA! Gritting one’s teeth, one clicks on „con­ti­nue“.

Now you have to read a SCHUFA-Lexus again and con­firm ever­y­thing with a con­sent checkmark.

Step 14: ZACK- An empty page. Nothing hap­pens. You can’t read any­thing. You can’t click any­thing. One looks stun­ned at the screen! Intuitively you try to save what can be saved and cou­ra­ge­ous­ly click on the link „Jugendschutz NETGATE“ in the left menu.

Oh, some­thing hap­pens there! It says: „Your Netgate regis­tra­ti­on is curr­ent­ly being pro­ces­sed. The set­tings for Netgate are the­r­e­fo­re not yet available in the cus­to­mer cen­ter. Thank you for your under­stan­ding .“ HÄÄÄ-What’s going on?!
You are final­ly fed up and check your e‑mail inbox to be on the safe side. But you find not­hing there

Well, now you just have to wait. A few hours later, a new attempt. Now it says:„Protection of minors has a spe­cial prio­ri­ty at Deutsche Telekom AG. -Please enter your four-digit PIN“. Underneath it says „Adult PIN:“ and „Security code:“ as well as “ Please enter the secu­ri­ty code we sent you by text mes­sa­ge here.“

WHAT DO THEY WANT?!?!? The click on the link youth pro­tec­tion at Deutsche Telekom vague­ly sug­gests what you have to do now! You have to wait a few days and get an „adult PIN“ from the Telekom by mail(regis­tered mail! ). Every time this form is cal­led up, the cell phone beeps and a cell phone PIN is sent via SMS for the cur­rent ses­si­on. Cell phone PIN and adult PIN must be ente­red each time the user logs in to the 18+ area of Erotic-lounge.com.

It does­n’t get any more com­pli­ca­ted!

We sum­ma­ri­ze again:
1. regis­ter at Erotic-Lounge.de
2. click email link
3. enter cell phone PIN
4. one is now acti­va­ted as a softcore-FSK16-User
5. ban­tra­gen so-called E‑PIN via the youth pro­tec­tion sys­tem NetGATE
6. You have the choice bet­ween SCHUFA- or PostIdent-Identifizierung
7. By let­ter post (regis­tered mail) an „adult PIN“ is deli­ver­ed
8. With each Netgate login a SMS is deli­ver­ed, which one must enter tog­e­ther with the adult PIN into a form.

Test – Review Member Area

Once you have made it through the abso­lut­e­ly dis­as­trous regis­tra­ti­on pro­cess, you are final­ly allo­wed to enter the 18+ area of the Erotic Lounge. To do this, you log into the FSK-16 area and click on „Direct Login 18+“ in the right-hand menu.

A white Telekom page opens with a login form of the Telekom-owned youth pro­tec­tion sys­tem NETGATE. At the same time, the cell phone buz­zes in your pocket and deli­vers an SMS with a PIN code for this ses­si­on. The PIN from the Telekom let­ter and the SMS PIN are ente­red into the form. You are then redi­rec­ted to the fami­li­ar black lay­out, but now in the FSK18 version.

The „mem­ber area for big boys“ looks only slight­ly dif­fe­rent from the FSK16 area. In the left menu, you will find various search and fil­ter func­tions, as well as an exten­si­ve cate­go­ry list (gen­res), which covers almost all sexu­al incli­na­ti­ons. Unfortunately, most cate­go­ries con­sist of English terms, with which porn novices or peo­p­le with no or school English know­ledge will have pro­blems (eg: Blowjobs, Bukkake, Creampie, M.I.LF.).

The ero­tic movie detail pages are quite clear. They usual­ly have descrip­ti­ons in German, a porn model / actor list and infor­ma­ti­on on film lan­guage, coun­try and year of release. The front and back pages of the video covers can be view­ed. The trans­pa­rent dis­play of the costs is plea­sant, alt­hough it should be men­tio­ned that the Erotic Lounge is not quite cheap. Movies can only be „bor­ro­wed“ as a 24-hour stream – with a lot of luck, there is also a down­load movie that may be saved as a WMV file on the hard drive. Preview movies (trai­lers) are unfort­u­na­te­ly not offered.

Once you have sel­ec­ted one or more films to watch, a shop­ping cart over­view is dis­play­ed after each purcha­se. This page leads to the sel­ec­tion of pay­ment opti­ons. You can pay at Erotic Lounge by cre­dit card, ClickandBuy, gift card (vou­ch­er), online trans­fer or cell phone pay.

You can then list your purcha­sed movies in the box „My Erotic Lounge“ via the menu item „Purchased / Borrowed Movies“. Depending on the pay­ment method, the movies are clickable and open a Flash play­er with the movie in a pop-up win­dow. The flash play­er runs very com­for­ta­ble. You can fast for­ward and rewind and enlar­ge the stream to full screen in XXL view. The reso­lu­ti­on and colors are clear and sui­ta­ble for bea­mer and TV.

Unfortunately, the login runs over a so-called ses­si­on, which expi­res after about half an hour. So if you watch a porn movie and then click on a link to Erotic-Lounge.de you will be mer­ci­less­ly kicked out, see the white login win­dow and your cell phone will jing­le with a new SMS. Gaaanz „class“!!!

In prin­ci­ple, Telekom meets almost all the requi­re­ments of a German-speaking VoD porn con­su­mer with the VoD por­tal, but the abso­lut­e­ly pep­pery youth pro­tec­tion gangs­te­rism gets on one’s ner­ves quite violently.

It is great that main­ly German porn models but also occa­sio­nal­ly inter­na­tio­nal ero­tic stars appear in the vide­os. Among others: Tyra Misoux, Vivian Schmitt, Annette Schwarz, Annina Ucatis, Briana Banks, Ashlynn Brooke, Aurora Snow, Carmen Luvana, Evan Stone, Eve Lawrence, Jana Bach, Janine Lindenmulder, Jesse Jane, Jessica Drake, Katie Morgan, Lena Nitro, Leonie Saint, Lexie Marie, Mandy Bright, Gina Wild, Melissa Lauren, Monique Alexande, Savanna Samson, Sunny Leone,Tatjana Gsell, Tera Patrick and many more.

Opinions about page layout & design

The lay­out of Erotic-lounge.com sticks to the left side of the moni­tor, which is a bit annoy­ing if you have a large monitor 

Even if the black design is a mat­ter of taste, the por­tal looks rather bor­ing and uni­ma­gi­na­ti­ve in our opi­ni­on. We would have expec­ted a bit more crea­ti­vi­ty from the tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons company!

After a good hour, you get used to the enti­re link struc­tu­re – but you get lost quite often, due to all the advertising.

Experiences with the subscription cancellation

To can­cel the Erotic-lounge.com and all rela­ted ser­vices and sub­scrip­ti­ons, you have to log into the Telekom Customer Center. There is a clear lis­ting of ser­vices and also a link „Unsubscribe from Erotic Lounge“. This func­tion is very com­men­da­ble and saves annoy­ing hot­line calls and letters.

If you pay atten­ti­on and don’t sign up for a sub­scrip­ti­on, you can keep your Erotic Lounge and Netgate account run­ning with a clear con­sci­ence, since the access data also works for the Telekom pro­jects VideoLoad, MusicLoad and GamesLoad.

Review judgement & conclusion of the Erotic-Lounge.com test report

On Erotic-Lounge.com, the youth pro­tec­tion check has been taken to the extre­me at the expen­se of user-friendliness!

What the Telekom expects from the inte­res­ted new cus­to­mer of Erotic-lounge.com at the regis­tra­ti­on is a shrill mad­ness! A whole 15 steps, SMS PINs for each login, a regis­tered let­ter and a SCHUFA query (or a PostIdent pro­ce­du­re) are requi­red to final­ly get unrest­ric­ted access to the FSK18 area 

The other pre­sen­ta­ti­on and also the pri­ces are slight­ly below our expec­ta­ti­ons. There are VoD por­tals that have ful­fil­led the same task in a far nicer, more trans­pa­rent, che­a­per and more user-friendly way in a direct comparison.

Of great advan­ta­ge are the German models and porn video labels as well as the German-language texts.

Website infor­ma­ti­on
Country of operator:	Germany
Language:	German
Cost:	Billing per film
	Clips: 2,99 € / 24 hrs.
	Long films: 5,99 € / 24 hrs.
	Club-ABO 15,99 €
Rebilling:	Voluntary
Test / Demo – Access:	yes
Payment methods:	Credit card, direct debit, ClickandBuy
Billing:	Telekom
Member manage­ment:	yes
Parental con­trol filter:	yes
Download limit:	no
Updates:	weekly
Cross-selling pre­sel­ec­ted:	no

Screenshots