Quality of imported Digital 8 video on MacBook

Now that I have successfully imported 10 minutes of Digital 8 content via Firewire to my MacBook (2 GB RAM), I notice the quality of the image in the MacBook is substantially less than that on the camera.
Q.Is this a function of the amount of data firewire can transfer, the video memory on the MB, or something else?
Q. Is it going to burn out to DVD in higher resolution than what is showing on the iMovie window? (I sort of doubt it).
Q.What would be the best way to get the highest possible resolution from the video that I have produced on the camera?
Q.Would going to a MBPro with it's own video memory actually improve this?
Thanks in advance.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.9) 2GB RAM

Firewire transfer is lossless. The data you have captured is exactly the same as what is on the tape. The entire process - from camcorder through iMovie through iDVD to the final DVD is processing the video at a resolution of 720x480
When you say "on the camera", do you mean on the little screen attached to your camcorder? Video always look better on tiny little screen like that! And what are you comparing it to? Are you viewing the clip in actual size on your Macbook (that would be about 1/4 of the screen), or did you blow it up to use a larger portion of the screen? In that case you get the opposite effect of the tiny screen. Scaling up on a computer screen almost always produces unsatisfactory results because of the higher resolution of the screen, and because you only sit 2 feet away from it. An analog television does a much better job.
I suggest you test this theory by burning just a short clip onto a DVD-RW, and pop it into your DVD player.

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http://help.apple.com/imovie/cameras/en/index.html?lang=en_US
iMovie 9 - cameras supported:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290?viewlocale=en_US
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014
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After reviewing your post, I have located an article that can help with transferring personal videos. It contains a number of troubleshooting steps and helpful advice to help you achieve your goal:
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Hi Denise,
Yes that is one of the oddest things about the digital camcorder industry. Almost none of them actually come with a Firewire cable even though they have Firewire ports, yet they often come with a USB cable even though the price of a FW cable is the same as USB. How come you buy a multi-hundred dollar camcorder and you don't get a Firewire cable, yet I can buy a $30 Firewire drive enclosure and it does? Odd!
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