well, let's not go crazy here.. i'm not selling the thing for financial gain. nor am i changing/editing the original broadcast for my own use in my own project. just simply removing the commercials and rerendering it for my own personal use on dvd for longevity. and if you think about, recording any program onto a vhs tape (which people have been doing for decades) is basically the same thing.

People with VHS recorders could not remove the ads. The industry allowed recording (actually, it took them by surprise), as ads were also copied and was adding to one more reason to actually buy the official VHS tape.

If you are recording in HD, and you edit out the ads, and then you create a DVD out of it, you pretty much have the official DVD quality. The industry gains nothing out of it.

But anyway, if that's only for your own entertainment it's not a big deal.

How are you recording your video and downloading it to your PC?

I have a TiVo and download video via TiVoToGo then use VideoRedo to cut commercials.

According to this:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-c.html
building a library of DVDs from recorded material is not fair use btw. The VHS recording is legally allowed only when it's used as time shifting technique and not as kept forever.

"How are you recording your video and downloading it to your PC?
I have a TiVo and download video via TiVoToGo then use VideoRedo to cut commercials."

when i first started doing this, i already had the (old) Super Bowls of my favorite team (which is what im doing this time - go Giants!) recorded on VHS. i used a capture device hooked up to a VCR to play/capture the video into an mpg file on my PC and started editing from there. nowadays i have a Comcast digital cable box w/DVR and a DVD recorder. because of the limited space on a DVD, i first recorded this Super Bowl (XLII) (in pieces) using the DVR then used the 'Copy to VCR' option to copy those pieces directly to a DVD-RW disc using my recorder as the VCR (they're hooked up the same way so makes no difference). now that i had disc images, i used Pinnacle to import the image directly into an mpg file on my PC (VMS creates an mpg for every chapter which I didn't want). a lot easier than having to muck with the whole capture device/VCR hookup. however, i still have to remove the commercials manually which is very tedious and the reason i asked the question in the first place.

pretty gray area i think. i know what you mean by official VHS/DVD releases. shows like Monk, 24, Seinfeld, etc all have each episode from each season available on DVD and i've bought a lot of them myself. the problem is a lot of sporting events don't. it wasn't until recently that MLB started releasing commemorative DVD sets for the world series winner where all the games included were actual full game rebroadcasts. the same with football. it wasn't until recently that the Super Bowl sets came out. most of the DVD's you do see available out there (particularly right after the game/series) are basically just highlight reels which is not what i want. the way i see it if the official DVD release of a sporting event is not available or won't be for a while then i'm not violating any fair use law by making the DVD myself for my own personal use. make the rebroadcast available on DVD and i'll be glad to buy it. this video editing is fun to a point but can real tedious when editing the commercials.

Ignoring the question of legality, an easy way to edit out commercials is via a hard disk DVD recorder.
I find the Sony RDR-HXD870 pretty good . You can record to the hard disk, edit out the commercials (fast forward makes it fairly quick and easy) and then dub the "clean" recording to a DVD.
Also can be used for transferring VHS tape recordings to DVD. Just plug the output of your VHS player to an input on the DVD recorder and edit as above.
My intent is to use this feature to convert some old "home videos" shot on a mini VHS camera.

building a library of DVDs from recorded material is not fair use btw.

Exactly were does it say that???? btw, clickable links would be nice.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I used VideoRedo to edit out the GAME keeping just the commercials!! Download a free trial to try it out.

Comskip is a free program that will cut commercials.

If you make a search for the word "library" in the link you linked, you will find it where it says this. You are not allowed in USA to tape shows for library building, even if it's for your own usage.

Look, nobody said that the US fair use law is fair. It's not fair. But it's what it is. In UK they have it even worse.