I have been using MF2.16 (or something like that) without too many concerns and even creating 16x9 dvd's with my videos but the menues of course are not 16x9 and audio still mpeg (really is better quality than my Sony cameras are capable of outputting) but got the itch to install something newer. I ordered a 3.5 suite on ebay but haven't recieved it yet so I installed the trial 4.0 version and here's my thoughts. I had some trouble getting the 16x9 to work properly on my Panasonic F87 at least when recording some dvd-rw's. A Sony dvd player and my computer did play back the 16x9 properly but the Panasonic didn't. This was with an mpeg created with Ulead Moviestudio 6.5 with the advance button activated in the mpeg encoder to allow 16x9 encoding.
I finally put the avi file (Canopus avi file) into MF4.0 and burnt it within the program. It took awhile for my Panasonic F87 to recognize disc (perhaps a dvd-rw concern that had been burned to numerous times) and it finally recognized 16x9 files.
Here's my biggest gripes with all versions of Moviefactory and most DVD mpeg encoding in general. The brightness and contrast is way wrong with importing dv files. I always increase the contrast by 8 points in Moviestudio color corrector and decrease brightness by 6 points to make contrast and brightness like the original file. Why in the world has Ulead not offered an option right in the mpeg encoder for this like TMPG encoder? This makes for a way washed out dvd which lacks color also. Maybe it's just an issue with Sony camcorders?
BTW: I did get some flickering my my MF4.0 encoded file when showing just a red building (maybe it was that I checked the enhance video button) otherwise encoded file isn't so bad.
Conversion to AC-3 audio seems ok without rerendering video.
MF 4.0 trial leaves out some basics that should be standard!
I did find out that I didn't have my Panasonic F87 DVD player setup properly for widescreen. I had the setting on 4:3 pan/scan and resetting it to 4:3 widescreen corrected the sometimes not going into widescreen (with bars top and bottom) mode. I don't have a widescreen TV, just a cheapo 4:3 27incher. Why it always went into widesreen mode with every widescreen dvd I created with the old software I don't know.