Problems with playback quality of animated DVD on television

I'm sending a ~20 minute (uncompressed, millions of colors) animation in QuickTime out of Final Cut Express HD in a format of HD-1080i and trying to get a very high resolution DVD for television (HD TV). Before taking the QuickTime video to any DVD writing software the aspect ratio (16:9) is correct and resolution is immaculate.
However, all my efforts to get a super-high resolution DVD of this animation, whether I go through iMovie or only to iDVD have gotten me a lot of written and wasted DVDs in my tests. The resolution is very poor.
QUESTION:
How do I get a very complex animation that requires very intense color and clarity to a DVD for playback on a HD TV using my software? In my arsenal is Final Cut Express-HD vers. 3, iLIfe '06 incl. iMovie and iDVD, Toast (if needed).
Please advise.

HHHMMM….. where to start. First, you can’t possibly
hold yourself to commercial quality unless you have a
commercial budget.
I don't expect commercial quality - just to be able to display the millions of colors and the extreme clarity on any TV and even better still on a HDTV. So far I only can get the quality I seek on a computer display. All my efforts to find a solution for television playback have resulted in a fuzzy and jerky animated feature. Here again I'm not looking for commercial quality - just clear, crisp and smooth.
Hollywood spends millions on
feature films. Compression hardware alone can run
several thousands if not hundreds of thousands of
dollars. Compared to iDVD included in a $79 software
suite? However, even the Hollywood produced DVDs must
rely on the DVD specification and as such, 1080i is
currently lost on them. So your answer to “isn’t iDVD
supposed to write anything I give it” is that if iDVD
takes your QT file (Which BTW, should be in the DV
format) it WILL compress it to a DVD MPEG 2 compliant
file. This means 720x480.
But I don't want any compression other than the final step MPEG2. And after reading this reply today - THANK YOU - THANK YOU - I at least understand now that I can't even use iDVD because it doesn't offer MPEG2 as a compressor.
I have located a mpeg2 encoder program that is shareware and will try to find a formule to use after iMovie HD additions of themes and chapters.
So the first step to take
is to recognize the limitations of equipment and
understand the standards. So now we should examine
the workflow to see if there is anything that can be
done. Other than knowing what Flash is, I don’t know
much about it. Can you select a frame size for doing
your animations? If so, guess what, use the 720x480
frame size. This is what iDVD is going to make it
(again, FCP may offer more options to you but that
isn’t listed in your arsenal).
Final Cut Pro isn't needed for what I'm doing, is it? I have already gotten exquisite playback quality for computers using FCE HD and I'm now trying to get the playback quality on a TV as good as I can get it.
Next, from within FCE,
do not change the settings when exporting via QT. You
want to export it as it is in FCE, you don’t want to
change it. iDVD is expecting a DV file. Any other
file and quality will likely take a hit. Finally, why
DVDs? Flash is typically web based. And computer
monitors have a much higher resolution than a TV.
Flash is generally web based but it can be used to produce a single QuickTime movie if the elements are primarily drawings as my animated feature is. Then on to Final Cut Express all of my imported clips are in QuickTime and thus are already compresssed by QuickTime's excellent compressor. I found that I do not get a good result if I allow any further compression - at least not on computer displays - as long as I export with QT conversion, compression none, millions of colors and specify the size I want it to maintain.
You
could output your Files and serve them up via a data
DVD to be played on a computer. Just curious.
I am already getting excellent playback quality on computers but now I need playback quality on any television because it is not intended only for computers.
Mike
Thanks Mike. You've already been a help in getting me away from iDVD for this project. iMovie may be OK still because its "HD". Got any more suggestions for my situation?

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