I must rant.. Just when I thought I had it all figured out..

[fmctm1sw]

So I get me a nice quality VCR (Sony SLV-575UC) cheap after a couple repair parts. I'm feeling pretty good about myself as I make a capture of my copy of The Lost World. It looks great, lots more detail than my other Sony VCR. Not to mention a 125 channel tuner so I can set up and
record movies off TV. All is great... Then

My converted movie looks great except for this horizontal black line that travels from top to bottom every once in a while. I have to disable the auto tracking too for some reason or it will drop frames. No problem, between tweaking the sharpness, a few filters, etc, I'll figure that one out. It still has issues with my old 3 Stooges tapes. Drops frames fairly consistently. OK so I'll just use my other Sony as it's more forgiving of beat up tapes (at a quality hit though).

Now I tune to channel 25 to check out a movie. It's way too dark so I tweak the brightness/contrast. Then it gets way too bright. It then hits me. Macrovision I've been had. The base plays movies on channels 23 to 25. I'm sure it consists of nothing other than popping a VHS tape into some beat up VCR. I connect the coax cable to my Wintv instead of the VCR and tune it to channel 25. Looks fine now.

I just keep going in circles. I fool around with sharpness only to find it appears too rough on TV. I get a nice VCR only to have it act up on me. I'm just never satisfied with the quality of what I get. Throw in my crappy Maxell DVD (+RW)s never loading right or erasing the first time and I'm just beside myself.....

[hech54]

Are we talking about Jurassic Park - Lost World or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World?

[Will Hay]

Are we talking about Jurassic Park - Lost World or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World?

Yeah, because in Arthur's version the horizontal black line is supposed to be there
Man, talk about a relevent question.
Nice one Sherlock
Will Hay