Ok, tell me if I'm crazy. Shot footage on 720p24fps JVC GY-HD110u. Captured the .m2ts using cineform demo.

Edited .m2ts at work CS3 and rendered to Mpeg2: MainConcept, Quality 5, NTSC, 23.976, No Field Order, Widescreen, VBR 2Pass, MinBR: 5, TargetBR: 7; MaxBR: 9, MFrames: 2, NFrames 8.

Edited .m2ts on my friend's Sony Vegas and rendered to Mpeg2 with as close to the same settings as above. Sony seems to handle the raw .m2ts better than PremPro CS3.

The brought the original .m2t, sony's mpeg and adobe's .mtv into After Effects to compare dropping each footage item onto the new comp button. Moving back and forth it appears that sony's mpeg maintains much more clarity than the cs3 mpeg - which looks like a blur was added.

Is this even a reliable way to compare output? Since it's widescreen - how does mpeg codecs resize and repixel to widescreen 1.2? Can someone point me to a more stable way to ensure DVD quality?

Watched them all on girlfriend's widescreen TV and they all looked great - I think... although... hmmm... - wonder if somehow I just caught that "have to have it absolutely perfect" bug - looking at it too closely?

Many many thanks.

Comparison can be a bane. How about two different monitors in the same edit room? Some people like a softened image which can be considered "degraded" by others. Ask a few friends to compare without telling them which program the test sequence came from. You probably get a number of answers that'll confuse the matter more!

If you are using the Cineform Demo, why aren't you using the Cineform codec AVI files to edit instead?
By the way, the included HDlink software does a great job on downconverting footage to DVD size. Much better then doing it inside Premiere, which adds some softness.