Thanks Stormchaser. My concern is that I am rendering images as follows:

16:9 aspect 960x540
User Settings like broadcast with motion blur unchecked
Optimized AA settings of 4, 6 and 50%
Sun Light lens flare off
Shadows at 80%
I have a scene with 2 poser files - one of them animated on a planet terrain with several terrains, about 8 rocks, 8 plants with a total of over 700 objects - the spaceship unfortunately has a zillion parts inside and out- it is static and does not move.
sun light, a point light, and a spot light.
Pentium III 3.0 ghz with 2 gigs of memory. ATI FireGL 3100 video card.

Each render takes 3 to 4 minutes to JPG file.  I have 265 frames in the fly by scene. I'm This means that this 11 second scene will take 13 hours at least to render. Is that normal?  

When I put the images together in Sony Vegas for editing and producting MPG files for DVDs I am using the 24p settings to create a progressive rather than interlaced video.  I am playing this on 62" DLP screen so all imperfections show. The larger the image I render the better it looks.  When I render at 854x480 the times are shorter but the image when compressed to MPG doesn't look that good on a large screen. When I up the pixels things improve. I'm trying to find what is the point at which it's at it's best - I don't think I need an Ultra setting do I?

Sorry for the long explanation but I am hoping that someone would look at all of this an determine if anything is out of whack or if I am not considering something....tks!!!

Windows 10 - Poser Pro 2012 - 64Bit - 24GB RAM - 4 x 3.40 GHZ processor