The Lovers' Guide

How To Intensify Lovemaking

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Documentary	None
Rating
Year Released	1993
Running Time	89:23 Minutes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	3,4,5	Director	Robert Page
Studio Distributor	Lifetime Vision Limited Warner Home Video	Starring	Andrew Stanway
Case	Transparent Amaray	Starring	Andrew Stanway
RPI	$39.95	Music	Robert Hartshorne Graham Jarvis

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 256 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	None	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles	None	Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

Once again, I am here to tell you all about an entry in the Lover's Guide series of DVDs, all of which appear to be recycled from old VHS masters, and all of which are of somewhat dubious quality, either as entertainment or as educational material. The Lover's Guide: How To Intensify Lovemaking is the episode I chose to look at when the question of which film I should view third came around. As the title suggests, this film covers the topic of how to make sex a more intense experience. Actually, I have a suggestion for the people who made this film: try having sex with a plastic bag pulled tight over your head, then you'll know what an intense feeling really is. Of course, the intense feeling I had while viewing this DVD was one of sheer boredom.

Transfer Quality

Video

After the slight improvement in the video quality of Making Sex Even Better, I was hoping this transfer would be better still, but it appears this isn't the case. With this programme reaching just under ninety minutes in length, the same overcompressed and artefact-riddled look that plagued the first disc raises its ugly head.

The transfer is presented Full Frame, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced. The transfer is reasonably sharp, but never so much so that it doesn't remind me of why I no longer watch more than two hours of standard television in a week. The shadow detail of the transfer is vague, but most of the transfer is brightly lit. Low-level noise is once again a slight problem with some shots of this transfer, with the occasional large expanse of colour being noisy and uneven.

The colour saturation in the actual programme is reasonable, but that Lifetime Vision Limited logo raised alarm bells for me by being even noisier and uglier than before. Thankfully, noise is only a mild problem in the rest of the feature, although it is still present to a small extent. Overall, the colour saturation is cleaner and more natural than the previous two episodes in this series, but it still could be better.

MPEG artefacts are less of a problem for this transfer, although the bitrate is still unusually low for a programme of this length. Some posterization is apparent in skin tones from time to time, but otherwise, this is a much more natural-looking transfer than the previous discs in the series. Film-to-video artefacts are not a problem in this transfer, although the slightly better resolution of this transfer leads me to believe that this particular episode was captured on film. Film artefacts consisted of some flecks and scratches on the transfer, but these were occasional and mostly slight.

Audio

There is only one soundtrack on this DVD: the original English dialogue, encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo at the higher bitrate of 256 kilobits per second. The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, within the limits of the thick British accents used by some of the people who speak in interviews that also comprise the narration at certain points. Thankfully, the voice of Doctor Andrew Stanway is easy to understand. Audio sync is not a problem because it was very rare to see the person doing the talking, and the one passage where this did occur had no subjective problems.

The score music by Robert Hartshorne and Graham Jarvis leads me to ask a single question. How on earth can you get two composers to work on a score for the same piece of film, and get it to be so unmemorable that you're hardly aware that you're hearing it? As with the score in the previous episode of this series, this score can be described as elevator music, with little or no real relevance to the onscreen action.

Once again, the surround channels were not used by this soundtrack, even to support the usual noises associated with this type of programming. The stereo activity of this soundtrack is a little more separated, but not by a great deal, so it is still quite a stretch to call this soundtrack anything other than separated mono. The subwoofer received a very small amount of redirected signal from the fronts, but it hardly produced anything more than an indistinct rumble.

Extras

R4 vs R1

Again, I couldn't find any resources to even suggest that this title is available in Region 1 or Region 2. If you really must have this title, I doubt that importing it from overseas is going to yield a significant improvement in the transfer quality, anyway.

Summary

The Lover's Guide: How To Intensify Lovemaking is another documentary that leaves little impression upon me as either a piece of entertainment or as an educational feature. The DVD on which it is presented is an improvement over the previous episodes in the series, but still looks messy and noisy a significant amount of the time.

The video quality is passable.

The audio quality is acceptable.

There are no extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Grundig GDV 100 D, using composite output; Toshiba SD-2109, using S-video output
Display	Samsung CS-823AMF (80 cm), using composite and S-video inputs, calibrated using the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder	Built In (Amplifier)
Amplification	Sony STR-DE835, calibrated using the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Speakers	Yamaha NS-45 Front Speakers, Philips PH931SSS Rear Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Active Subwoofer