THE VIEW FROM STAGEVU IS BREATHTAKING
10/2/08StageVu is one of the many movie sites the sprung up to take the place of the defunct Stage6. Offering only DivX films for streaming or download, the site fills the gap admirably. Buffering troubles seem to be it's only issue, but the site's developers are aware of it and working on it. The site comes highly recommended by JollyJo.tv reader myvideolinks, a regular contributor to StageVu. Thanks MVL, for letting us know about this great (relatively) new site.
The site
The site boasts a simple, easy to navigate layout with five major areas: "Videos," "Channels," "Forum," "Player," and "Submit a video."
StageVu divides videos into the sub-categories of Animation, Art, Blogs, Comedy, Educational, Films and Movies, Games, Music, News and Politics, Sports, Television, and Others. Warning: films are not categorized beyond that. There's no genres within "Films and Movies" so the user must browse or search to locate titles. You can search for a video, channel, or tag. This helps since members embed most genre information in either the channel or using tags. Also, the relative newness of the site translates to a small catalog of titles, but it grows daily.
StageVu has many pages of user created channels. Don't expect genre titles, alphabetizing, or any defined organization for that matter. For instance, there's 2008 Movies and Fullmetal Alchemist Series, but no category for 2007 movies.
If you have questions, skip hunting for a FAQ and read the forums. They're very active and mostly friendly.
The site's remaining two pages are self-explanatory. The Player page is simply for downloading the DivX Web player which is necessary to watch any of the films on the site. Submit a video is where you upload new videos. It links to registration, because only members may upload.
StageVu's developers must realize how annoying a page full of ads can be. The site shows only one ad per page, on the right side, and provides a "Hide ads" link. This should encourage users to look at the ad initially then get it out of the way for movie viewing, as opposed to simply blocking all ads on the site.
What's to watch?
New movies compose the body of the content in "Films and Movies," with a few exceptions. For example, the site currently hosts I Want To Believe (The X-Files Movie), Hancock, Full Metal Jacket, and a cam copy of Righteous Kill among others. The "Educational" sub-category contains documentaries. Beware of the occasional porn. There's no sub-category for it so the members uploading it tend to stick in random sub-categories.
Stream quality
The site has problems with slow streaming speeds, but developers have been working to solve the problem, calling it "a great hindrance and annoyance to all of our users, and to us, too." Last month they restructured the servers to double capacity. Unfortunately, the site still has some buffering issues. I Want To Believe (The X-Files Movie) stalled out four times. Allowing the movie to buffer while doing something else worked pretty well, but may not be an option for all users.
Conclusion
StageVu provides users a well designed, nearly ad free viewing experience. So long as it's small initial catalog grows, and it solves the buffering issue, StageVu is positioned to become one of the best movie site on the Web.
***
This post guest-blogged by Carlie Lawson...
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (5)
Did I just see my name up there? hehehe...
One more thing I like about Stagevu is that they offer URL remote uploading which is really a very convenient way to upload a file that is stored in another server! Which means, you don't need to exactly upload the file from your PC!
:)
Hey MVL! Thanks again for letting us know about StageVu. That's one awesome site, and I agree, the remote upload would be really handy. Please, drop a line if you see any other great sites out there JollyJo readers should know about. I'll happily review them.
All the best,
Carlie
I disagree, StageVu has been extremely slow for months on end to the point where buffering takes longer than the video itself. Users with cable to DSL to fiber optic connections have reported this, It offends common sense to suggest that a streaming video site that cannot stream videos effectively will persevere because of it's killer ad free web page.
AJ...love the loyalty. We did in fact mention the slow stream quality though. One can't really argue with the offering and the absence of those disturbing ads though..
Hi AJ,
Thanks for commenting. Please, keep in mind that this review is now three months old and a lot can change on the Web during that time. We do mention slow speeds in the article more than once. Letting a file buffer completely before watching worked for me, but I realize not everyone may have that option. StageVu does still have many pros to it which balance that one con (which most sites have). Try some of the other sites we've reviewed, as well. Somewhere among these many reviews, there's probably at least one that'll work well for you. It just depends on the content you're looking for.
All the best,
Carlie