[MPlayer-users] Why do rental/bought DVDs look so bad?

[James Rowlett]

Hi,
I hope you guys don't mind that this is not really a mplayer question,
but I don't know where else to ask.
There is no point in transcoding using mencoder if source is no good.
I live in the UK.
All DVD's I have rented recently, the discs look fine (no scratches), 
when I play
them I can clearly see snow (not white, but scatrerd pixels of an off 
color). It is very visible to
my eye.
If I pause the picture, the picture is steady, with a scattering of 
'snow' pixels.
Some are these DVDs are dual layer, i.e. 7+ GBytes, so no lack of 
bandwidth (plenty of MBytes per second).
I have tried playing them on my PC, XBox 360, DVD player. All show the same
simptom.
If I record a program with my DVD recorder (connected to an RGB scart, 
NTL box
is the source), then playback in all 3 above, it looks much better than 
when playing
a DVD disk. Solid colors, and no snow.
Any ideas would be much appreciated.