Thanks DSE. Can you recommend a "reasonable" Beta Deck. I've seen the Sony UVW-1800 mentioned, but was wondering about other options. Thanks again. My mind is setlling a bit.

The 1800 is a common workhorse, and can be found fairly inexpensively. If you can find a J1, they're pretty good, as they play most anything, but they're not easy to find, due to their small size and easy access. (They don't record, just playback)
I guess I should have asked if you need to be able to print, or just capture?

He needs to PTT and make dubs.
We've got a couple of 1800s and a BVW 75 with the SDI option card which would save you the cost of the SD Connect but then you'd need a BMD card although that'd be a little better quality wise. However I think the 75 is / was fairly expensive and the SDI cards were a very uncommon option.
Given what you're paying for dubs I'd doubt if it's worthwhile once you factor in cost of stock and your time, remember 5 copies have to be done one at a time whereas the dub house no doubt has a rack of VCRs. Last time I checked 1800s were going for around $5-$7K in the USA and you also need to watch for head hours, heads aren't cheap to have replaced and SP decks wear out heads faster than do DV or Digibeta decks as they're using oxide tape and they need cleaning as well. I'd imagine most SP decks coming onto the market have had a hard life as well although the 1800s seem solidly built so that mighn't be a big factor.
Bob.

Hopefully, you're charging your clients for each dub.... it shouldn't be costing you money, you should be billing them for it. If you have to add $250 to the budget for dubs, then make sure you do that when you quote.

I'm currently using a Decklink SP card, and a UVW-1800. Works well, some limitations, but overall - great (if you go over to creative cow, and look in the Vegas forum, you'll see a bunch of long-winded posts from me, about it). Decklink is a much less expensive option than SD connect - you can pick up an SP card for $550 or so. For simple PTT functions, a fast P4 system should do the trick - I'm running it in a P4 3.2HT Asus board, 1GB and it works fine.

A UVW-1800 will run around $3-4K used, plus the Decklink - so that's a LOT of dubs, even at $50 a pop. Don't forget, the SP tapes will cost around $12 or so each anyway...

Regardless, you should be charging - whether YOU are making the dubs, or someone else... if you don't have the coin to drop on the hardware setup, just send out for dubs - bill your client, and charge 15-20% for handling fees. They don't need to know how much it costs... standard operating procedure for us. We touch it, we mark it up - ad agencies do it, retail businesses do it, you should too!

Mike.