Me thinks the big push to STB DVD recorders is going to leave a lot of people mighty pissed off. As they are going to discover getting your video back is far from easy if you want to edit it and there's going to be a quality hit.

Also unless your very careful about the DVDs you use they're not going to last very long. Latest PC mag over here reports several brands on the market are failing after 18 months. Problem is with the lacquer coating used to protect the foil layer. To cut costs some are using a material that is quite porous. Combine that with using aluminium as the foil and it doesn't take long for the foil to oxidize and goodbye DVD.

I do seem to notice a resurgance in interest in SVHS VCRs over here. At the end of the day that's a much better medium for off air recording. With mine I can go S-Video from my SD digital decoder so the quality is very good. I wonder how many of these STB DVD recorders are getting a good feed to start with.

I think you mean that VHS is SLOWLY fading away (you can still by cassatte tapes and CD's came out years ago). Also, digital VCR's (D-VHS, DV, MiniDV, DVCPro, Digital Beta, etc) are much much MUCH better then anything you'll get on DVD).

What you will need to do is this (and it should work!).

Capture your footage onto your computer (as DV AVI). Edit down in Vegas. Use Print to Tape to output to your DVD recorder (if you don't do anything but cut, you shouldn't need to render). That should do what you want.

Also, an FYI, it IS illegal to copy movies that you don't own the copyright to from VHS to DVD. It's also illegal to record TV programs on them (as with VHS). Noone will probely care if you do though.

I hope this helps!

Happy F,

It is certainly NOT illegal to record TV programs for your own use. This was the court decision that paved the way for the betamax and, later VHS home recording industry.

Gary