Anyone recreating their "less than perfect" DVDs?

I've been getting some great deals on HD-DVDs and a few on Blu-Ray. Since I don't have a portable player, I convert them to DVD.

The main problem, and this is aimed at the producers, is the quality of the original DVDs. My prime example is V for Vendetta. I got the widescreen edition of this movie, and frankly, the video is complete crap. Whenever there's a dark scene, there are major macro blocks. Quite a bit of the movie approaches Youtube quality.

I was fortunate enough to pick up this movie plus a few other (in HD) for about $4 each. It was the first one that I converted to DVD. The result was amazing! Now I have a DVD of the movie that looks like it is supposed to look, and probably better. Now it slides toward the "near Blu-ray' end of the spectrum.

This brings up a theory that I've recently been playing with: Are some DVD producers downgrading the quality of the video in order to push Blu-ray? I say this because most of my older discs are much sharper and cleaner looking than some of the newer ones, and most of them don't have an HD choice.

I haven't rented before buying in a while, since I know that I want the movie, but now I just may need to rent to see how well they made the transfer. Nothing like buying the movie twice