Advice sought for archiving of 8mm video

[Eric Goldsmith]

I have a handful of 8mm video tapes (family movies) that I'd like to archive in a digital form. My goal is to use a format and form factor that can be played in a standard DVD player (which I don't own yet, but will likely purchase this year). The image quality characteristics (e.g. size, resolution, etc.) of the archive must be as close as possible, ideally equal to, the source (i.e. 8mm). Also, I currently only own a CD-RW drive (and not a DVD+RW), so I'd like to use the CD format.

I've started reading the information here and I'm a bit overwhelmed. Given my goal, can anyone recommend:
- video format
- capture hardware
- capture/authoring/burning software

I'm a technically competent person, just new to the area of video processing, so get as technical as you like.

At first glance, it appeared that VCD was a perfect match for my goals. However, I've seen some opinions saying that the bit-rate of the MPEG1 encoding is not sufficient to deliver quality equal to 8mm tape. Is this accurate?

What are the alternatives that meet my goal of playback on a standard DVD player? SVCD seems quasi standard, but some of the DVD players claim to support it only at a certain bit-rate - is there some common bit-rate supported by all?

Thanks for any help.
Eric

[MOVIEGEEK]

There are many capture cards on the market they price from $50 up.
ATI tv wonder ve is a good capture card(pci),there is firewire ieee 1394
(best quality)there are usb capture devices but the picture quality is terrible.You need burn software too go to www.cnet.com/downloads
and try Nero or RecordNow Max,NTI cd-maker works too.

See you at the movies.......