MPEG2 better than Divx?

[perdomot]

I was curious which would look better and conserve file size so I ripped a DVD of the old Fantastic 4 cartoon and then converted the vobs to both and mpeg 2 file and an avi/Divx file. I used a 2 pass with an average bitrate of 1800 to try to get the best quality. Although both clips are the same size, the mpeg 2 clip had noticeably less artifacts around the characters, even when they werent moving. I thought Divx and other mpeg 4 codecs were supposed to deliver better video quality so did I miss something? I used VDub for the avi file and TMPG for the mpeg 2 file.

[Wile_E]

MPEG4 throws away more information than MPEG2, so yes it may look worse. They are lossy compression formats. They throw information away forever. You can't get the information back. Uncompressed AVI or Huffy is best with DV-AVI right behind it. MPEG2 and 4 are both lower quality. MPEG does not save all individual frames like DV-AVI does.

[InXess]

DVD is MPEG-2 and uses 5-6k average bitrate, that's why it usually looks better.