Quality of DVD's after bit rate lowering

[gxal]

What is the quality of a DVD-R after having the bit rate lowered ,say to reduce size to 2/3 of the original ?
Is it about the quality of a VHS or S-VHS tape ?

[maltesers]

It depends on the quality of the original and which encoding program you use. Done properly the quality should still be good. I've seen Lord of the Rings(3hrs) on a dvd5 and the quality was perfect.

[krusada]

...another factor is whether or not the film is letterboxed - if so theres less actual video data per frame to compress, hence you can theoretically get away with lower bit rate.

[klona]

Hi,
I did Pearl Harbor and Stalingrad @ 65% using Rempeg, plus one AC3 stream, to fit on a DVD5.
Quality is of course a bit lower but the result is quite good.
In fact i saw nearly no difference on my TV 82cm and a bit more on my projector.

I did a first test @50% for pearl harbor to keep a bit more of extra, but this time result was too bad, at least for me.
But some people find full movie on one CD in divx has the quality of a DVD.... :-), and I am sure they would have find "perfect" my 50% m2v...
Best is to try the same short sequence @ different bitrates and find what is your limit.