My father and I had this argument on a viewing of U-571 at Christmastime. He didn't believe me when I said that there were breaks on all DVDs. And the one in U-571 was always right there where we saw it! He saw the one in U-571 and insisted the DVD was bad.
DVD's are dual layered. Also they can be dual sided where you have to flip them by hand. I'm not sure if that is the same thing or a different type of disk. Half way through, you will get a brief pause as stuff gets ready to flip into the second level or side. I think the break severity depends on the quality of the player. Nicer players will handle it better.
What I'm seeing as I buy more multi-episode DVDs is that the location of this break is planned more carefully by some companies. With the ones that only give 2 eps on a disk, you never see the break. With the makers of the SG-1 DVDs trying to cram so many eps on to a disk, they're letting the chips fall as they will, shall we say, and the break is in the middle of a scene.
Oh, and I think why you get a stutter is that the DVDs are in a high quality MPG format. The moment of the switch confuses the decoder on what the true keyframe the player is at. In extreme cases, maybe older DVD players, you get squares in the image.
Audio quality is another matter. I'm betting new DVD players give out different signal strength, or stuff better suited to home theaters processing them to full strength. They are built with being in a home theather system anyhow. If you have an old 13" no-name TV you're SOL. Crank up the volume. Meanwhile, I'm having a bunch of trouble with my 19" TV from 1993 being overwhelmed by explosions on DVDs being pumped through my home theater receiver. Any picture with a boom breaks up into a screen roll. Again newer, better equiptment not working with old.
I'ts no fun to watch death gliders go boom and not see the boom!
