Smearing is a problem that is a bit tough to diagnose accurately. A number of average players smear otherwise-perfect CLV transfers. In other words, it's not always the disc; it's often the player. On the other hand, it is possible to do some video tweaking before mastering an LD, so some smearing can be the result of (especially) temporal smoothing.

So, to make the blanket claim that the DC is better than Faces because of smearing may be more a result of the player being used for the comparison than the actual quality of the transfer.

(For the record, I don't see any smearing on either Faces or the DC with my 925.)