Agreed on the documentary although left Mark is more easily recognisable than right Mark. That to me is a significant gain and given that right Mark should be sharper and more recognisable that left Mark, with the increased sharpness and pixel count from 4mp, it's a sign that the current compression under h264 is too much to get a decent result.
Yeah. I think they've turned up the compression a bit to compensate for the loss of detail due to compression. Unfortunately, as seen in the comparison, whilst it helps with the text, left Mark is more detailed than right Mark, something that shouldn't happen given the almost double pixel count on the right. The issue is, all the gains from the extra pixels are lost if simply throw them away again when you compress the image. At least that's my reading of what's going on.
I know some will scream at me for saying this. But I'd like to see the right picture at 12 and 15mbs for comparison. Not going to happen as neither the camera nor BI support that. However, I said it a long time ago, my approach to compression is simple, keep whatever you want as default for the large commercial guys to whom storage space is a premium, but give others the option of other settings in the firmware / software as for home users, small installations, installations where either quality is at a premium or storage is more freely available.
The only good news here is storage costs are falling fast. WD Blue drives are only a fraction of what they cost a year ago.