This is a pet hate of mine , so indulge me for a few seconds.
DVD quality
This is just advertising jargon that suggest an inscribed but desirable amount of quality to the unsuspecting public. The term has been used with compact still cameras, mobile phones and other similar "movie capable" devices.
There is no minimum amount of quality that can be captured or played back on DVD. DVD is a standard that defines the compression type, maximum line resolution, frame rate and the like, nothing to do with minimum quality, the limit is the maximum quality ( IE see the difference between the same movie release on DVD and Blue Ray) . To explain, if you capture some video with the worst possible PC cam and burn that onto a DVD, that is DVD quality....
Franco

I share your grief. I've been researching camcorders for ages but cannot get detailed information on the quality of the footage. It's amazing how much info is on the net and the extreme lack of detail.

DVD Quality. What does that mean? I've put good quality and poor quality videos on the same DVD!

Don't get me started on marketing spin doctors...

Cheers

I think it's more a case of evolving technology than Spin Doctors. When movies were first released on DVD media, 720x480 was the gold standard (still "generally" considered to be DVD Quality). The chart below is a good one that I copied from Wikipedia and it shows the progression of video quality over time. The storage media is unfortunately (and incorrectly) often used to describe the lastest and greatest in video quality (ie. VHS video, SVHS video, DVD video, Blu-ray) which really has nothing to do with the quality of the video stored on the media.

Just to revisit the tread...
Like most , you are talking about QUANTITY not QUALITY..
If I give you a pint of beer all you know, before you drink it ,is how much beer there is not how good it is.
Franco