Originally posted by: dumb_kid
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//Snip from videohelp:
Laserdisc resolution is 528 X 576/480, but many titles in US, after 1990, are using the 544 X 480 resolution.
In Europe, the success of Laserdisc was minimal, so the few released PAL titles, continue to use the official resolution for PAL (528 X 576). In theory, there is a 544 X 576, but I never saw a Pal laserdisc using this resolution.
//End snip

This is very misleading. (I would say complete bollocks but I can actually see where he's coming from.)

I'm no video expert either, but I'll try and explain my simple view of things:

The specs on the D925 give a resolution of 440 lines (in the horizontal direction) for PAL playback. This is an analogue resolution, and represents the maximum frequency, or bandwidth, of a waveform stored on that analogue format, for laserdisc it's about 5.8MHz.

(There will always be 576 lines in the vertical direction, because that's the PAL standard).

When you capture a video signal, the waveform is digitised. Formulas (e.g. Nyquist) are supposed to give how many pixels you need to sample to ensure all the horizontal detail is captured, and I believe that's where this guy got the 528 and 544 from. (Depending on how you calculate the sample rate, I've seen this figure quoted as 600 for laserdisc, see section 3.5 of the Doom9 capture guide.)

But this is all academic when you're capturing to make a DVD. Since the final desired resolution is 720, you should alway capture at 720 to avoid having to resize later. (I know I cropped some blank pixels down to 704 for my DVD, but I didn't resize, I just added in an 8-pixel wide border either side.)