I have done several XVCDs (a whole movie on 1 cd) with TMPGenc Mpeg1 VBR CQ 55, maximum bitrate 1500, minimum 700, audio 128, mux as non/standard VCD and burn with Nero 5.5.
All these XVCDs have worked well with my Hollywood+, but last week I bought Philips DVD 622 player which plays these CDs but freezes occasionally for a while. I suspect this has to do with going under a minimum bitrate (problems occur most likely with widescreen DVD-rips and almost never with tv/captures).

Apparently TMPGEnc does require checking "Enable padding when falling below minimum bitrate" to create XVCDs that will play without problems on my player. However, selecting this option can increase the mpg file size quite a bit, so I would like to know if there is a common minimum bitrate below witch most standalone players encounter problems.