A well-done, hi-res, hi-bitrate MPEG-2 capture, after resizing and re-encoding, is to me just as good as an AVI cap after processing, with the advantage that I can record 4 - 5 movies before running out of space. No frame drops AT ALL is an added bonus, particularly important for IVTC.

The AVI is perhaps SLIGHTLY sharper, but also more prone to pixelisation, and if a light filter is applied to alleviate this, it is perhaps somewhat worse than the SLIGHLTY softer but block-free MPEG file. Close call.