Selective Muddiness

Project cut on FCP5 dual core system. Footage from F900 HD, BetacamSX, all squeezed dumped to DVCAM for DV anamorphic project. Final delivery to be dvd played on 42" plasmas, widescreen.

Sequence is 7 minutes. Simple cut, not many effects, most shots have movement, some dissolves and titles.

Workflow - FCP5, export to compressor 2, 60 min best widescreen preset, bitrates 6, max 7.5. Import into DVDSP 2, set encoding to 16:9, lower field dominant, put encoding settings same as compressor (weird to do this again). My titles are lower(bottom) dominant, Helvetica Bold. Make dvd.

Result - Quality looks fine with some shots but muddy with others (exteriors and titles). There's some smearing happening as well. I don't know if video levels could be an issue, but I'll drop broadcast safe to crank down anything above 90 to be safe. I'm losing fine detail.... interior and any close shots are fine. The compression process sounds like the culprit. I'm only going thru DVDSP because I feel I need to make a 16:9 disc since my final delivery needs to be widescreen.

What I thought about doing was exporting to qt mov using dv codec, selecting 16:9 option in QT settings, then import to IDVD 4. IDVD only seems to burn 4:3. My question is to keep this testing to a minimum, would I lose anything by burning a 4:3 disc squeezed, then zoom it or resize in dvd player or plasma on output? IDVD seems to give me the best quality with other projects for some reason. I'm just not sure about what I'll lose not having a true 16:9 disc/image.