Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!parc!biosci!agate!news.ossi.com!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!cdsale From: cdsale@netcom.com (Todd Ostrer) Subject: Adult CD-ROM REVIEW: Adult Movie Almanac Message-ID: Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1] Date: Thu, 7 Apr 1994 17:13:35 GMT Lines: 496 ADULT MOVIE ALMANAC =================== I recently purchased a copy of New Machine Publishing's (NMP) Windows-based CD "Adult Movie Almanac" (AMA). [Note: A Mac-based version is reportedly also available.] This product deals exclusively with adult movies and the people who work in that industry. If you are not interested in either of those topics, you can skip the remainder of this review and forget about this product. On the other hand, if you have any curiosity about the people in the adult film industry or the movies they produce, you may find this review to be of interest. As with all of my previous adult CD-ROM reviews, what follows is my own personal, non-expert opinion. I have no financial interests in any part of the CD-ROM industry, nor in the adult film industry. While I try hard to be objective in my reviews, the reader should understand that my opinions and comments are based on anecdotal evidence rather than scientific method, and are sometimes biased, however unwittingly, by my own personal preferences. My goals are to inform others of my experience so that they might better consider their own purchases, and to encourage producers of adult CD-ROMs to continually increase the quality of their products and bring more added value to their customers. First, I would say that this has been one of the more difficult CDs to review. While I've spent many hours working with this product, I'm still not sure that I've poked into every corner yet. Accordingly, if you, kind reader, have or in the near future purchase this CD and find something about it that I've not mentioned here, please drop me a post and tell me about it. In the meantime I will continue to explore it. Synopsis ======== This Windows-only CD would have more properly been called a "digest" or a "directory", perhaps even an "encyclopedia". It is chock full of data and information about adult films and their stars. "Almanac" has traditionally referred to collections of ephemeris-like data. Perhaps using any of those alternate terms would have created copyright or "assumed name" problems for NMP. Nonetheless, this product cleverly and effectively leverages contemporary computer-oriented technologies to bring a wealth of capability to those interested in its subject domain. The production values of AMA are tops. In addition to the excellent, informative jewel case inserts, there is a *14 PAGE* users' guide. Installation, such as it is, is foolproof. Save creating a new Windows application group, takes up NO additional HDD real estate. (This turns out to be good news/bad news - more later). Moreover, there is a text Forward on the CD that contains useful and interesting data as well. It's worth the effort to track down the Forward through the File menu and read it. The data on AMA consists of two "books": Movies and Stars. Each book may be paged through "manually" or each may be topically searched. Each page contains textual information and (except in one case) a 256-color picture which can be "enlarged". On the vast majority of pages, Movies and Stars alike, the text areas have what AMA refers to as "hot text" words that are displayed in bold. This "hot text" will seem very familiar to hypertext fans: Mouse click on a bold word (which is either a movie title or a star's name) and presto-change-o you are taken to that page in the proper book. Very slick! The review text and star biography areas are, to put it mildly, not for the squeamish or easily embarrassed. The AMA editors were very direct and "slangfully graphic" in their descriptions of the movies' and their stars. The pictures that accompany the movie pages are generally "XX-ish"\; the pictures in the Stars' book are generally "X-ish". In sum, this CD would prove to be a valuable addition to anyone's library who has any interest in the adult film industry. I recommend it. Statistics ========== I'll have to depart from my usual style in this review as AMA is radically different from the adult static image CDs that I've reviewed in the past. While I'll try to hold to the major section headings for consistency, expect to find somewhat different commentary therein. Within the two "books", Movies and Stars, there are 750 and 252 entries, respectively. While the unnamed user interface isn't capable of having both books open simultaneously, multiple copies of the interface can be started in different windows making switching between the two a fairly simple task. This approach is somewhat speedier than switching between books in a single copy, but of course the "hot text" links don't work across copies. AMA evaluates each movie with two qualitative parameters: Rating and Heat. Rating is meant to be a measure of the intrinsic qualities of the film such as production values, camera work, acting, plot (yeah, right), etc. Ratings are measured in one to five "stars" like restaurants with "five stars" being the best. Heat is meant to be a measure of the raw sensuality\lust conveyed by the film and is ranked in descending order as "orgasmic", "arousing", or "titillating". Using the search engine on the CD, I did some counts of films in each of the two areas. For comparative purposes, I made similar counts using several recent volumes of the annual adult film directories published by Adam Film World (AFWD). The results appear below: Ratings counts and percentages ------------------------------- Almanac (750 films) AFWD (1155 films) Rating Count Percentage Count Percentage 5.0 19 2.5 9 0.8 4.5 15 2.0 6 0.5 4.0 186 24.8 126 10.9 3.5 80 10.7 88 7.6 3.0 350 46.7 455 39.4 2.5 39 5.2 141 12.2 2.0 60 8.0 285 24.7 1.5 0 0.0 2 0.2 1.0 1* 0.1 39 3.4 * Note that the Forward on AMA says that all of the films with a rating of "1.0" had been eliminated, but actually one (#252 - Hot Flashes) remains on the CD. What this analysis suggests is that AFWD is more conservative than AMA in their ratings. AMA rates 40% of its films above the 3.0 mark whereas AFWD only ranks 20% of the included titles there. While the AFWD sample size is roughly half again as large as the AMA sample size, there were 545 common titles between them. In my experience, a film rated 3.0 is marginally acceptable from a quality standpoint, and that anything below 3.0 is hardly worthy of a rental much less a purchase. Heat Counts and Percentages --------------------------- Almanac (750 films) AFWD (1155 films) Heat Count Percentage Heat Count Percentages Orgasmic 299 39.9 Volcanic 241 18.5 Arousing 388 51.7 Hot 601 52.0 Titil- Warm 325 28.1 lating 63 8.4 Other 15 1.3 Here again it appears that the films taken from past AFWD volumes generally get a more conservative "heat index" than those in AMA. Over twice the percentage of AMA films get a maximum heat rating compared to the AFWD films. IMO, the middle rating (arousing\hot) is just that - kinda "middlin' " as we say in the South. "Nothing special to write home about." might be another way of putting it. Further, the AMA review text doesn't always seem to jibe with the rating and heat figures. As an example, #507-Sex World is given a 4.5/Orgasmic rating. Yet, the review text ends with "...the show drags and takes itself way too seriously." This sounds inconsistent to me. What does all this mean to the consumer? First, remember that one person's feast is anothers' famine. Secondly, just like in the so-called "legitimate" film industry, there are really only a small minority of adult films that are really good. Unless one is a "raincoater", in which case just about anything is OK, it would behoove the consumer to proceed cautiously. With respect to this CD, that translates into practicing the equivalent of "safe sex" with its recommendations until you get to know it better. As a "negative" example, #735-White Bun Busters is also rated 4.5/Orgasmic. While opinions are obviously subjective, I've seen this movie and I found the "plot" inane and the acting sophomoric at best. The sets look as if they came from the back room of a Salvation Army warehouse. The sexing is frantic to be sure, but in no way does this flick deserve a 4.5 rating. Even AFWD gave it only a 3.5. I'd give it a 2.0 - but a very "hot" 2.0. Operations - Sysop ================== This really is a moot point as the whole design and intent of the AMA CD is end-user oriented. None of the covers nor the users' guide even mentions BBS usage. The copyright notices would seem to preclude legitimate downloading of the images by themselves, although technically that's certainly possible. There are no file descriptions or FILES.BBS files included. Even the file naming convention is obtuse. For example: "MVIE0099.LRG" and "MVIE0099.SML" are the LaRGe and SMalL versions of the picture that accompany the 99th entry in the movie "book". In sum, this just isn't a BBS-able CD. Operations - End User ===================== The stated system requirements on the rear cover include: 286 or better CPU, DOS 3.3, Windows 3.0, and a multi-media capable CD-ROM drive. The requirements stated in the users' guide include: 386 or better CPU, DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1, 256-color capability, 4 Mb RAM, mouse, and a CD-ROM drive. The latter come closer to the truth and aren't to be taken lightly. In particular, the performance of my 1x speed CD-ROM drive was, for this product, a marginal performer at best and outright trying at times. The users' guide also mentions a few other restrictions (like no support for ATI's Crystal Fonts or 16-color video) but they also give workarounds for these. Otherwise, any reasonably fast Windows PC should suffice. Those who have ever used a CD-ROM encyclopedia will find AMA's user interface functionality at least somewhat familiar. While each of the two "books", Movies and Stars, can be opened and browsed through (forwards or backwards) one page at a time (or, with a rather coarse granularity, "thumbed" through - more on this later), the real heart of the interface is its search engine. The Movies book can be searched on any of the "fields" on a page which includes: title, rating, heat, time (running time), released (date of release), fetish, starring, director, and from (studio). Because of its lesser content, searching in the Stars book is more limited consisting only of the ability to search on names or combinations thereof. The search engine is capable of simultaneously considering up to seven different criteria logically connected by the Boolean operators "AND" or "OR". An example search in Movies might be: "If title starts with `sex' AND starring contains `john leslie' AND rating is greater than 3 AND heat is orgasmic AND released is after 1990". After this search, further browsing of Movies would be limited to just those titles that satisfied that search criteria, if any, until a "Search all" restores the full book. Unsuccessful searches (usually) terminate with a "beep" and a Windows message box that must be cleared via an "OK" button. The user can then modify the search and try again. Each new search always considers the whole book. There is no way to preserve the results of one search and limit a subsequent search to just that subset. However, it was interesting to note that following a search, use of any "hot text" pointers would add to a previous search's results in the appropriate book. Those that have read any of my previous reviews, good or bad, will recall that I always try to include some statement of areas where I think improvement can be achieved. The same is true of this CD and the following paragraphs (Things To Fix\Change) contain those suggestions - and there are quite a few. Similarly, I've included some paragraphs (Oops!) that to me represent minor gaffs of one sort or another. I hope the producers will take these observations in a positive vein and modify their PROCESSES such that their future PRODUCTS are of higher production quality. Things To Fix\Change -------------------- - The comparatively large users' guide (14 pages!) is almost 100% complete. The one major point that is missing is the fact that a both-button click on the picture that appears on the currently displayed page causes an enlarged version of that picture to be displayed. With regards to this highly useful but undocumented capability, the following is noted: = This feature doesn't work the very first time it's tried (in either book) after starting the AMA interface - only an all-white window is shown. = While the larger version of the picture is displayed in a Windows frame that includes a "full screen" button in the upper right-hand corner, pressing that button only results in a full-screen, all-white window. Only the Windows' "elevator bars" can be used to pan around the image on the screen. This is particularly regrettable as the images themselves are quite large - about 740x500. Display in the smaller window results in a noticeable loss of image quality, particularly in the darker areas. Viewing the images outside of the AMA interface will confirm that the .BMP pictures are of very good quality - better than is evident by viewing via the interface. Perhaps if the "full screen" button had worked, better displays would have been possible. = The larger version of the picture is displayed without any further image manipulation being accessible - like zooming, rotation, flipping, palette manipulations, etc. - The most serious deficiency in AMA's search capability is the lack of any means (e.g. parentheses) to group search criteria. Therefore the user should exercise care in ordering the criteria in complex searches involving both Boolean operators if intended results are to obtained. - The "natural" order of Movies and Stars is by title and name, respectively. Each page in both books has a number which corresponds to a portion of the name of its accompanying .SML and .LRG pictures, as shown above in Operations - Sysop. However, the results of a successful search are "logically renumbered" such that this relationship is temporarily lost. I'd have preferred that it had been maintained. - The Starring credits don't always identify all of the actors and actresses in the movie. For example, #283-Introducing Tracy Winn is illustrated by a clip showing Nina Hartley who isn't listed in the credits. - Because of the nature of "the biz", it's probably impractical if not outright impossible to keep track of all the aliases that are used by every actor or actress. AMA does as credible a job at this as I've personally seen, but keep in mind that I'm no expert. One place where the CD does fall down is in movie #322-Lifeguard. It rightly credits "Andre Shields" and acknowledges that name as an alias for Sean Michaels. However, the bio in the Stars book for Mr. Michaels doesn't mention the Shields alias. This seems a bit uneven to me. [NOTE: It would have been a TERRIFIC value add to have made all the known\listed aliases "hot text" that linked into the Stars book! In this example, clicking on "Andre Shields" would have brought up Sean Michaels' page in Stars.] - In a similar "completeness" vein, #490-Secret Mistress, the caption identifies the two pictured actresses as Scarlett Scharleau and Taija Rae (in that order). However, the credits only list a "Scarlett" - they should have included her last name as well. Further, Miss Rae is on the left side of the picture so, by convention, her name should have come first. - I would have found it helpful if AMA had included alternate or sub-titles in the filmographies. For example, #347-Make Me Want It is also known as "Beg", and #375-Naughty Victorians is also known as "A Man With A Maid - The Naughty Victorians". - The display space allotted for the movie titles in the reviews is short enough that a few titles got truncated. Examples are: #321-Life Styles of the Black and [Famous]\; #352-Marilyn Chambers' Private [Fantasies]\; #576-Suzie Superstar: The Search [Continues]. Other examples of truncated titles include #643, #644, #701, #702, and #734. - Titles beginning with the English articles "A" and "The" are sorted into the "A" and "T" parts of the listings, respectively. The AFWDs ignore these words in their sorting, using instead the first "significant word" in the title. This is an approach I personally find more usable. - Each book has a visible bookmark or "tab" that can be dragged back and forth with the mouse to arbitrary places the books' contents. The problem with this "looked good on paper" idea is one of granularity. In the Stars book, the minimum movement that one can achieve is about 4 pages\; in the Movies book, its a whopping 13 pages. If the "tab" metaphor is to be useful, it must have a granularity of 1 page at a time movement in both books. - Use of the keyboard screen navigation keys could be VASTLY improved. The interface recognizes the "arrow" keys and the "page" keys only in the context of scrolling the review text in Movies or the biography text in Stars. (Scrollable text in the Starring box can only be done via the mouse.) Furthermore, keys are "wasted" in that the PgUp, up-arrow, and left-arrow keys all perform the same function. The same holds true for the PgDn, down-arrow, and right-arrow keys. Since all scrollable text windows already have Windows "elevator bars", this is truly a waste of resources. If the "tab" can't be made to have single-page granularity, then my suggestion would be for the "page" keys to operate on the active "book", along with "home" and "end". The right- and left-arrow keys should advance\retard the active book's "tab" by 1 for each keypress. Larger granularities should be available through combinations of the arrow keys with the Shift\Alt\Cntl keys. These actions would only change the "pointer value" of the tab, not actually cause the pages to "turn". A separate action, like "Enter" would be used to cause the book to be paged to the indicated tab pointer value. - Captions under the pictures in both books are always one or two lines in length. The pictures themselves are oriented as either portrait or landscape\; none are square. Where the larger portrait pictures are accompanied by a two-line caption, the caption is outlined with a thin-lined box which helps to set the text off from the picture. In all other situations, there is no outline box. This seems uneven to me, and I'd have preferred for all captions to be boxed. - Speaking of the captions, in the Movies book, not every person in each picture is identified. I would have preferred if they had been. Oops! ===== - In #182-Ecstasy Girls 2, the whole bottom portion of the review text is in bold as if it were "hot text". Clicking there produces no action so there's no damage, but it looks sloppy. - For Movie #247-Her Name Was Lisa, no accompanying picture is displayed. Checking the directories confirmed that there is no "MVIE0247.SML" or "*.LRG" file present. - In #263-I Am Curious Black, the caption identifies the actress as Tanya Foxx. The credits list "Tiffany Storm" who is, in fact, the same person but the alias connection isn't made. Additionally, AFWD and the credits on the video tape itself spell this "Tiffany" as "Tiffanie". - Through some mysterious corruption, the capital letters "R" and "A" have a nasty habit of showing up in the middle of words in the Starring, Review, caption, and bio text areas in the two books. Examples of this can be seen in #8-A Little Christmas Tail where "Being" becomes "BeRing". In #149-Debbie Does Dallas, "great" becomes "gRreat". This is annoying when it occurs in the middle of a "hot text" word as it prevents the hypertext link from working. Examples of this are in #267-Illicit Affairs where "Victoria Paris" becomes "VictoriaR Paris" and in #241-Hate To See You Go where "Nina Hartley" becomes "RNina Hartley". - In #464-Raunch 2, the picture is reversed left-to-right (note the "EXIT" sign). This page also contains an example of some of the minor textual gaffs that are on the CD: the word "show" in the caption should be "shows". Minor small typos are in #612-The Devil In Miss Jones 34 which should read "...Jones 3 & 4". Likewise, #662-The Shadow Dancers 12 should be "1 & 2"\; #688-Trriangle should be "Triangle"\; and #706-TwentysomethRing should be "Twentysomething" - there's that pesky "R" again! - The Foreword says that there are "...two dozen..." fetishes used in the reviews. Actually there are only 21, but all of the major bases are covered nonetheless. - Minimization of the display window from the main almanac screen doesn't display an icon, just the application title. However, minimization from the enlarged picture's window gets an icon, but restoration only produces an all-white window. - The Print Screen key doesn't result in a very useful capture to the Windows clipboard. Only the text portions of the display are copied and even that is in a graphic format unusable by (any of my) Windows text processors. - More of a curiosity than a "bug", on startup AMA sometimes begins with the Movies book open and sometimes with the Stars book open. I didn't spend a lot of time looking for the cause of this little quirk, so it remains an amusing mystery. Before leaving this section, I think it's worthwhile to point some of the "value adds" that I think this product brings to the customer outside of the obvious wrought by AMA's data and functionality. + Star biographies are fairly current and forthright. For example, Jerry Butler's kiss-and-tell book is mentioned as are the unfortunate suicides of Shauna Grant and Megan Leigh. The "underage scandal" of Traci Lords is also acknowledged. + Of the 252 biographies of the stars, 50 are of male stars. This is far out of proportion to the adult film industry as a whole where actresses outnumber actors well in excess of this 5:1 ratio. Kudos to NMP for including a significant number of actor bios in their product. + Star biographies also give fan club information where it exists. As mentioned, aliases get good coverage in AMA helping the users identify their favorite stars. + If one reads the bios carefully, one can learn some of the "inside scoop" of the industry like who's married to whom\; who some favorite partners are, etc. This is interesting reading that adds depth and helps to personify the stars' otherwise somewhat remote identities. Visual ====== This section will be uncharacteristically short compared to my previous reviews. Most of what's noteworthy about the images that accompany the text on this CD has already been covered in other contexts in the preceding paragraphs. Still, it's worth repeating that, in their native 256-color BMP format, both the *.SML and *.LRG versions of the pictures on AMA are quite good in both content and technical image quality. It's a pity that the interface can't or didn't take full advantage of them. Most of the Movie pictures are clips from the titles. Most of the Stars pictures are posed shots that really show the people at their best. I'd really encourage users to trot out their favorite standalone BMP file viewer and at least sit through a "slide show" of AMA's imagery, especially if you have 800x600 capability. While the portrait-oriented scenes are nice (full screen height but only about 1/3 screen wide), the landscape-oriented scenes are more impressive being almost full screen in width and about 2/3 screen high. This is a FAR larger image than can be seen from inside the AMA interface, and a much better quality. Of course, as said, if the Windows "full screen" button had worked, this may not have been true. In regards to that, I tried hard to make sure that it wasn't just my system's configuration that was causing the problem. I tried various Windows display drivers, etc. and nothing helped. I'm satisfied that it's a bug in the interface, but I could be wrong. If anyone out there buys/has a copy of this CD with this feature working, I'd like to hear from them. On the use of standalone BMP viewers, it should be noted that not all of them will properly recognize the files on the CD as true BMP files. For example, I had to copy the ones I viewed with VPIC and GDS to my HDD and give them the DOS file extension of ".BMP" before either of those programs would display the images. CSHOW on the other hand was able to display the files directly from the CD. The headers in the files are fine. Apparently it was just the extension that tripped up some viewers. Bottom Line =========== If you're at all interested in the adult film industry, its people, and its products, you'll really like this CD. It's very well executed, has a storehouse of information on it, and I have no qualms about giving it a strong recommendation. I'd also recommend at least a 2x speed CD-ROM drive for this product. It would make viewing, and especially searching far more pleasant than a 1x drive can manage. Nonetheless, if, like me, a 1x drive is all you have (I'm waiting for the 4x drives to sell below $500 - or the Tooth Fairy to bring me one), don't let that fact alone sway your purchase decision. This product has a lot to offer to those who are interested. ------------------------------------------------------------- Reviews by Bob Jackson: Houston Texas ***************************************** Pacific Data Graphics 2473 S.E. 135th Portland,Or. 97233 (503) 257-7255 '24' Hrs. Questions/Orders 1-800-400-7255 '24' Hrs. ORDERS Only Email: cdsale@netcom.com (For Latest Catalog) Over 350+ Adult Titles ------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Pacific Data Graphics Inc. 'your cd-rom disk source 1100 titles' 503-257-7255 '24' Voice# for Questions,Orders 1-800-400-7255 '24' # for Orders Only: