ars parent
That's not true. PNG has some filters that pre-compress the image before sending it to zlib.
I'd say that still falls under the realm of being "pretty much a zlib compressed bitmap", no?
One of the few truly interesting articles on Smashing Magazine about optimizing pngs for their filters. It shows that yes, the filters are really a huge part of how pngs get compressed:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/15/clever-png-optimi...