Recording medium having recorded thereon coded information using plus and/or minus rounding of images

An image decoder comprising:

• a demultiplexer which extracts motion vector information, quantized DCT coefficients, and rounding method information from input information to be decoded;
• a dequantizer which dequantizes the quantized DCT coefficients to obtain DCT coefficients;
• an inverse DCT converter which performs inverse DCT conversion on the DCT coefficients to obtain an error image;
• a prediction image synthesizer which synthesizes a prediction image of a currently decoded image by performing motion compensation using the motion vector information, the rounding method information, and a reference image which is a previously decoded image;
• and
• an adder which adds the prediction image to the error image to obtain a decoded image;
• wherein the motion compensation is performed with half-pixel accuracy and uses bilinear interpolation to calculate intensity values of chrominance or luminance at points where no pixels actually exist in the reference image, the bilinear interpolation being performable using a positive rounding method and a negative rounding method;
• wherein the bilinear interpolation is performed using a rounding method specified by the rounding method information;
• wherein the rounding method information is included in coded information of the currently decoded image;
• and
• wherein the rounding method information specifies one of a plurality of values.