While playing around with direct MPEG2 import and AVISynth, I found AVISynth to be quite the faster cat

The realtime preview actually performed decently.
I imported some eva footage, one demux m2v, the other AVISynth(vobs w/DVD2AVI project...

). Cut out some sceenes placed them on top of each other and adjusted the transperancy rubberbands to %50. So basically we have two scenes overlayed on each other @ %50 transperancy, one for the AviSynth, one for the m2v file.
M2V file = chop citty, barely skipped thorugh the play.
AVISynth file = pretty smooth, Misato drying her hair with a towel was smooth.
Anyways, what with this info, I don't know if it's really worth the upgrade
~klinky