MPEG1, Layer II CCE Encoding

[Cheesus]

Is the encoder for MPEG1 Layer II in CCE any good? I've done a few tests & it seems fine, I was just wondering whether anyone out there had experienced any problems with it?
I'm considering using MPEG 1, Layer II instead of ac3 because I'll be dealing with bulk encodes & don't really need the extra workload of encoding to ac3.
Also, how compatible is MPEG1 Layer II with PAL DVD players? I've read conflicting views on the compatibility of it. I thought it was supported in the spec for PAL players but now I'm not so sure. I expect my DVD's to reach a wide variety of players so this is a major issue for me.

Cheers

[Cheesus]

Thanks Axed. Were they PAL DVD players?

[Matthew]

For PAL, support for mp2 is mandatory, says the dvd spec. But I don't know if there are still issues with PAL players or not.

If the issue with AC3 is manual intervention, then there are batch solutions available (e.g. softencode, and surcode I think).