Customer Reviews

Playboy Cover to Cover -- the 50's: Searchable Digital Archive--Every Page, Every Issue

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are quite a few rave reviews here and, for many, they will be spot on. I'd like to target my review to a more technically discerning audience interested in the technical specifications. Many will not mind the faults I list below and that's totally fine. It's great to enjoy this set as a fun retrospective of classic Americana, but I feel the need to point out some egregious shortcomings for those that care.

First of all, Bondi claims they're doing us a favor by tethering their content in a stupid digital rights management scheme. It's so that we can enjoy the content with greater ease. To many, it will be a headache. Not that their image viewer is awful. It's just excruciatingly slow compared to looking at the same images in, say, a PDF viewer like Acrobat. The interface is slow, sluggish, and unresponsive. I'm often required to click buttons more than once while waiting for the application to respond. It really makes reading a chore. With most PDF viewers, you can move between pages rapidly. With Bondi's system, you must load one (or two) pages at a time. I tested on a Mac Pro with a great graphics card. It sure wasn't my machine that was slowing things down!

While the articles are indexed and although it IS handy for jumping around, so are PDFs!!! Why not just give the users PDF files and let them use which ever free and available apps they want? It makes absolutely no sense except as a DRM mechanism. Bondi has drastically reduced the functionality of this collection - a shame. It also guarantees a limited life to the files. If they were jpgs, pngs, or PDFs, we could always keep them current, changing the formats and the technology advances. However, the images are locked away in a proprietary file format.

The installation is quick and fairly painless. It did automatically create a shortcut on my desktop without asking my permission (annoying), but I suppose that's easy enough to delete. I haven't tried installing on multiple machines, but since no software registration is required, I'm assuming you can install multiple copies. As the software agreement reminds us, this is a violation of copyright, so don't do it - but you probably can anyway.

Oh yes - and Bondi assures us that software updates maintain compatibility. The fine print indicates that "additional fees may apply". They might provide the updates for free, but then again, they might just make users keep paying for something they supposedly already bought.

Now onto the scans. Well, they're scans of about the same quality as anyone with a regular scanner could do. I was pretty shocked to find that many of the pages are not exactly level. As we all know, it's tough to make perfectly level copies from bound print matter, but I assumed for $100, Bondi would do a better job than this. The image quality is nothing amazing. Once you blow the pages up to a readable size, the quality is noticeably diminished.

Their browser gives you the option of zooming up to 300%, but at that size, the text looks awful. The 300% option really only works for the centerfolds. They seem to be scanned at a much higher resolution than the rest of the magazine. To be fair, the centerfold images do look great - great color, great resolution, good amount of detail, etc. I think it's a bit sneaky to drop the resolution for the rest of the content though.

The whole idea is so great that it's a shame Bondi Digital Publishing screwed it up so bad. The first mistake is the crippling DRM. The second is the silly interface. The third is the inherently limited lifespan due to the DRM and interface. The fourth is the surprisingly low quality of the images.

Early Playboy is good clean (well, maybe PG-13) fun and it's a great idea to give a new generation access to this piece of American history. I'm not against the idea at all - it's a great one. I just think the realization of the idea fails on so many levels. If you don't mind the issues I raised above, you'll probably enjoy this. If you're on the fence, all I can say is, I hope you find it cheap. I don't think it's even worth Amazon's current price of $41. Shame on you, Bondi.

I bought the Playboy Cover-to-Cover DVD set for myself because I was culturally curious about the magazine (I am a woman) from its early years and I wanted to review it as a potential holiday present for my 80-year-old father. I figured my Dad might enjoy a ride down memory lane, providing this product was easy enough to use for an older person. I read the first review but know better than to credit any one negative review, and boy, was I right!

First, I ran the DVD on Windows Vista and it ran flawlessly. I scanned through many of the issues and played with the navigation. For any technically savvy person who ever used a PDF, navigation is a breeze. While it is not a PDF, it is similar enough for a quick knowledge transfer. The Playboy Cover-to-Cover DVD set installed quickly, loaded the default first issue (Hello Marilyn!), and from there all other issues were loaded from the second DVD. I found moving from issue-to-issue no problem at all. My Dad will have NO problem using this software.

I bought this product to read magazines, and it is easy to navigate through the individual articles just like you would with a normal magazine. You can open issues, save reading lists, search by author, article name, and so on...and it was EASY. Personally, I found the entire experience so good, that I also bought the Rolling Stone Cover-to-Cover DVD set at well.

For Mac users, I am also pleased to note that these DVDs also loaded up on my new Leopard MacBook Pro. If you are looking for a great gift for any person who wants to see what all the articles are about (sic), look no further. The beautiful packaging, and exceptional content make this a much better gift than something boring like slippers for Dad! Thank you Bondi for giving me something I know Dad will LOVE for this holiday season!

The Playboy Cover to Cover --the 50's is a fantastic collection and journey in the way back machine that offers an amazing glimpse into the history of our culture as America was being altered and influenced by the hugely important launch of Playboy magazine. 50 years later, using searchable DVD technology, every single page from inception in 1953 through till December 1959 is reproduced. Every ad, every letter's column, every record review, and yes, every centerfold. What an incredible, insightful time machine to sift through the cultural archeology this collection represents. I can't wait for the 60's edition.

The packaging is terrific, and it even comes with a true reproduction of the humble first edition including M. Monroe and Sherlock Holmes.

An earlier reviewer felt it was a problem that the issue files are not PDF. Maybe he doesn't have a lot of experience with these things, but there is absolutely nothing to worry about because it is a piece of cake convert them to PDF if you want. And you don't need some obscure "hack"...in fact, both MAC and PC have the ability to convert the files right from the print function.

To do that, open an issue in the bondi reader and then go to the normal print dialog as if you were going to print, and instead of choosing a printer, pick the print to PDF option. Done. It saves a copy of the file in the PDF format to your hard drive. After that you can open the file in any application that opens PDFs. Now why you would want to do that is another story...you would loose all the functionality that the bondi software gives you to search and browse...but if you feel you need a back-up, it is an option.

Now for the rest of the review...first of all the presentation is just fantastic. I loved the well designed elegant, yet understated box-set, which opens to reveal the 2-DVD set on one side, and a beautiful coffee table book on the other side. They also include a faithful re-issue of the very first issue of Playboy, with Marilyn Monroe. (which on its own sells for $25 on the Playboy site) The book, the reissue and the DVD set come out of the box set, which is nice because you can take the DVD set to your computer, and sit with the book and magazine wherever you like to read.

But the real star is the digital archive and all those great issues of Playboy from the 50s. Looking at Playboy's first decade in its entirety like this is to travel back in time to a post war America that was looking for a little levity. The pictorials are more playful and peek a boo than anything else - Vargas come to life really. It is abundantly clear from the very first issue that this was going to be a magazine that featured good writing...with world-class contributors a plenty.

The software is fast to load and the interface is sleek - maybe more importantly it was easy to figure out how it works and I found myself up and reading without even really thinking about it. They scanned every issue, front to back (hence the name Cover to Cover I guess)...so that means you get to read the entire issues, including ads for Jazztone records, bongos and the Czech aluminum engine Skoda cars. When an issue is open in the view mode, you flip the pages and then you can quickly zoom in on anything that you want to read. There are quick-key commands for those that like them. I have a scroll wheel and I just scroll down as I read. The experience is easy and I found myself browsing issue after issue and reading some terrific great old articles. The January 1957 issue, for instance, has a little gem, the Walter Tevis short story, The Hustler, which was adapted a few years later for the Paul Newman movie of the same name.

It is also really interesting to simply browse the covers. Playboy's design was progressive and well ahead of its time through out the 50s. When you see all the covers taken together this way, it is an impressive body of work with a clear sense of art direction emerging. When you find something you like you just click the cover and the digital issue opens so you can read it.

The interesting thing is how you can search and browse, however. In the age of the Search Bar, we are used to searching google style. But say you like Ray Bradbury and want to see everything that he wrote? It is very easy to use the "browse by category" function do that. I started typeing Bradbury and it immediately pulls up all the pieces he wrote. A "search" function would only find the mentions of the word "Bradbury", not necessarily what he wrote. So for locating all the works of a specific contributor the bondi software makes it a real snap.

Once you find an article, you can either go to it directly to read it, or save a link to it in your "reading lists", which is nifty little feature that lets you compile lists of selections for reading later.

The book that comes with it, Under the Covers, the 50s, is like a copy of Hef's scrapbook and would make a great stand-alone book. With many pictures and ephemera that have never been published, the book provides a rich back-story to the digital archive and tells the story of the evolution of the magazine. For instance, we learn at the beginning of the book that Hefner's mother invested $1,000 in the launch of his new venture...and we see his actual letter of thanks to her...which makes sure to thank her ever-the-more because he acknowledges that she didn't necessarily agree with all that he was doing. In this way the book follows the start up through to 1960, and has many of Hef's personal letters, notes, contact sheets marked with his selections, along with a lot of commentary from other media outlets about the magazine.

All in all a great value, and an amazing way to experience the first decade of Playboy in it entirety. Looking forward to seeing what they do for the 1960s

Excellent resource for photos, stories and essays. The search function is brilliant! - finds text in all article plus the advertisements too. Built for a Mac too.

I bought Playboy The 50's after how impressed I was with the functionality of Rolling Stone The First 40 Years. I was as equally impressed with Playboy as soon as I installed it. The content is stored on just one disc and very easy to navigate once it loads onto your computer. A convenient feature of the software in particular is how you can view the pages of the magazine. The flip mode allows you to read each issue like a magazine, with two pages displayed. The read mode zooms in on a particular page so it is a lot easier to read. The best feature however is that you can save the disc to your hard drive and never use the disc again!!

This is an incredible bargain! I have loved every minute I've spent reading the wonderful fiction, interviews and reviews. (The works of Ray Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder" and "Fahrenheit 451" are worth the price!) I heartily recommend this collection, and can barely wait for the decade of the 60's to come! What I remember of the 60's, I remember fondly. :)

Oh, yeah... the pictorials are awesome, as well.

After I won kudos for buying this as a gift for friends over the holidays, I bought one for myself. I figure, hey, Playboy from the 1950s, back when women were naturally gorgeous without the benefits of really bad airbrushing. With the resurgence in popularity of the 1950s and 1960s thanks to the TV show Mad Men, I was looking forward to getting this.

First of all, this is awesome. The content was jawdropping, and I actually had more fun reading the articles (seriously) because back in the 1950s, Playboy was a distinguished gentleman's magazine, not a porn mag. It was designed to appeal to the intellect and the senses. The women, I think, were more naturally gorgeous, and could pose in ways that were more erotic than them just being naked, if that makes any sense. Plus, real authors wrote for Playboy back then, so you could honestly say "Honey, I'm reading Playboy for the new short story by Kerouac!"

The bad thing is the digital rights management software. As much as I want to share this with someone, the price makes it the perfect gift because the included materials on the discs are worth while. The software is a pain to deal with, and I really wish that from a UI side, they would have picked something else. It worked fine when installed on Vista and on my Mac, so it was fun to show friends - BUT, still, I didn't like this software that treated me like a criminal.

The price fluctuates on this, and I snagged it for $30something. If you can find it on sale, it'd make for an awesome gift.

Ditto to the last review. I received this as a Christmas gift from my wife, and I could not be more pleased. While I have never completely subscribed to the Playboy Philosophy, its fasinating to see its evolution from the beginning and to be able to get a "real time" perspective of 50's culture from that vantage point.

I got my dad the Rolling Stone Cover to Cover set for Christmas, and I saw that Bondi had released a set for Playboy's first decade as well. Both of these sets look like great windows in to pop culture history.

I downloaded the demo version of the software on www.covertocover.com and it's easy to use. I'm very interested to see what other products they've got coming down the line.