I tried using WM9 to encode a video with 2MBps for a 2 hours and 45 minutes file at 2 pass CBR and its taken almost 36 hours. Is this normal and is there anyway to speed this up? I actually tried the same file on another computer running the same setup (Athlon XP 1600 1GB RAM) and MS's encoder encoded it in 10 hours using what appears to be the same settings.

Does VV4 do something differently than MS does to encode?

Also, does SF plan to add support for HDTV encoding?