You'll notice that in the JPEG 2000 example, the artifacts from using wavelets are much less noticeable than with traditional JPEG. This is exactly because wave

You'll notice that in the JPEG 2000 example, the artifacts from using wavelets are much less noticeable than with traditional JPEG. This is exactly because wavelets are able to represent sharp edges with very little information (due to the fact they themselves are localized sharply in time). This avoids the blockiness that is inherent in traditional DCT transform based techniques at low bitrates.