The Lovers' Guide

Secrets Of Sensational Sex

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Documentary	None
Rating
Year Released	1995
Running Time	66:46 Minutes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Dee Andrews
Studio Distributor	Lifetime Vision Limited Warner Home Video	Starring	Sarah Brewer
Case	Transparent Amaray	Starring	Sarah Brewer
RPI	$39.95	Music	Jefferson Chambers Ellas Marshall David Roper

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

Again, I am left wondering exactly why I stuck my hand up for a title that plays like a bad porn film. The Lover's Guide: Secrets Of Sensational Sex is the fifth, and hopefully last, in a series of short films produced by Lifetime Vision on the topic of human sexuality. With this episode being presented by doctor Sarah Brewer in place of the mild doctor Andrew Stanway, the most obvious difference is that the narration is a little easier to handle in this episode, if only because you're going to get thoroughly sick of the latter after watching the other four films without a break. Still, I recommend this film to anyone who is interested in making a documentary as an example of how not to engage your audience in the subject of your documentary.

Transfer Quality

Video

The transfer is presented Full Frame, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced. The transfer is reasonably sharp, but it still looks like an old VHS master for the most part in spite of the improvement over the other four transfers in the series. The shadow detail is still vague when it is actually required, which is not often. Low-level noise is still a problem, but only very mildly so in this film.

The colour saturation in this transfer is acceptable, but nothing special in spite of the fact that this is the best transfer in the series. Skin tones were rendered accurately in spite of being occasionally affected by posterization. Dot crawl is visible in the edges of some colours, but this is relatively minor compared to the previous transfers, especially the first.

MPEG artefacts are still mildly problematic, with some posterization and macro-blocking still mildly evident, but it is only really noticeable when certain shots are paused or in slow motion. Film-to-video artefacts weren't a problem. Film artefacts didn't appear to be a specific problem in this transfer, either.

Audio

There is only soundtrack on this DVD: the original English dialogue, encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 at the higher bitrate of 256 kilobits per second.

The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, without the limits posed during the previous transfers. Audio sync is not a problem because almost all of the speech occurs off-screen, and the speech that did occur on-screen had no subjective faults.

The score music once again succeeds in making the film seem more like satire or a bad comedy than a documentary, in spite of the best efforts of three different composers. Jefferson Chambers, Ellas Marshall, and David Roper all worked on this score, with a theme song present that is so abominably lame that the parties responsible don't deserve to be specifically mentioned.

The stereo activity of this soundtrack is reasonable, but there is no surround presence to speak of. There really is very little in the soundtrack that would call for the use of surrounds, anyway. The subwoofer was used to support some sound effects and music, but was mostly silent.

Extras

R4 vs R1

This disc doesn't seem to be available in Region 1.

Summary

The Lover's Guide: Secrets Of Sensational Sex is a documentary that I will almost certainly not be watching again, presented on an average DVD.

The video quality is average.

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