[livedead13]

[quote=Malth]I think what he is saying is, you can have as high a bitrate as you want, but for something like a VHS sourced video, more bitrate becomes a moot point, because the original quality just isnt good enough to warrant it.
QUOTE]
I understand using this logic for the sake of saving bandwidth...

but the other logic would be that yes, the vhs source material doesn't look great because it's from tape, but is it really necessary to make it look even worse with digital compression artifacts, simply for the sake of an easier upload/download?

I would guess that the folks who spend hours and days capturing, syncing, and authoring these dvds are not concerned with small file sizes becuase a). they are concerned about getting the most absolute quality from their hard work, and b). they don't need to download them.