> Face it, MPEG-1 is basically VHS quality. Go to any encoding site such as
www.doom9.org and they'll tell you the same.
It totally depends on the bitrate. If you are familiar with the technology, you know that MPEG-1 is the almost 100% identical to MPEG-2 when it comes to coding progressive contents (films), and MPEG-2 is what is used in DVD.
So what you are saying is: DVD is basically VHS quality. But you know it is not true. The reason is simple: when you throw more bits, you can get quality as good as you want. MPEG (1 or 2) at 4 or 5 Mbps has DVD quality.
> Your encode also suffers more dot crawl and general mosquito noise which is characteristic of MPEG-1 encoding.
Yes this is characteristics of MPEG-1 encoding *at low bitrate*, that's because of the lack of quater-pel motion compensation and bloc filter, we all know that. But still, your 800 Kbps appears to be globally inferior quality compared to the v3 1.7Mbps MPEG-1. Again, that's my opinion. And I agree that your 1.1Mbps is as good (or slightly better) that the v3.