Refine Edge - Feather gives stepped and ragged result

Not sure if this has been answered, I can't find anything similar here.
CS2 used to have Select -> Feather and it worked great!
Now, in CS3 we have Select -> Refine Edge and it goes wrong almost as soon as I start moving the Feather slider. When I hit 250 (max) the resulting "Feather" has several extremely uneven and very visible steps in the blend. I usually have to go back and blur the result several times until the steps go away.
Anyone else have this problem? Is there a better way to smooth selections before deleting, filling, coloring, blending, etc
Thanks,
Pete

Most images are 8 bit. Scanner is 24 bit. The banding I mention happens with both.
Generally, I select a small area. For instance, my scanner leaves a slightly darker 1/4" strip at the left edge. A slight light fall off in that 1/4" strip down the left side.
I used to make a very narrow selection from top to bottom, at the farthest left I could go. Maybe 1/16" wide, and then feather it greatly. Then I can adjust it lighter and it used to work perfectly. Now with feather edge, I get huge banding.
Also, when feathering a layer, such as a black vignette around the edge of a photo, pushing the feather edge too high up causes extremely noticeable banding.
Why does the feather edge slider go up to 250 if banding is noticeable at 30 or 50?
I need this feature to blend layers and transitions for web design all the time and it always causes huge problems with banding.
Select -> Modify -> feather radius is very difficult to preview results. The Refine Edge preview is great, but the banding is not so great! It happens every time I use it.
To my way of thinking, selection edge feathering is selection edge feathering, no?
Thanks

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Exception in thread "main"
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at
at
at
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native
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at
at
at
at
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at
at
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at
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at
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at javax.imageio.ImageIO.write(Unknown
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Hi there,
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Refine Edge - Feather gives stepped and ragged result

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