I would like to have some help with a very specific situation. I will try to give as much information as I can. Maybe someone will be able to help me.

I own VHS-tapes from the US (NTSC), Germany (PAL) and France (SECAM) and lived in Germany. There I bought a multinorm VCR (JVC HR-J737MS) which worked perfect with my old PAL-TV from 1984. Back in the US, I am not able to view any of the European tapes since the TV does not support the nessessary UHF channel 36. The VCR is supposed to convert everything into PAL (as it did in Germany) and NTSC. Rather than investing into another TV - I would like to transfer all my VHS-tapes into SVCD's. MY DVD-player (DGE100N) is able to play DVD's which were made for DVD-players used with PAL-TV's in Germany (if the DVD is NOT country-coded) and also plays a SVCD created in Germany for use on PAL-TV's.

So far I do not have any hard- or software to capture or convert the movies. Therefore I spent the last three days only reading thru vcdhelp.com to find out what I need to get in order to achieve this goal. However I read so much that I am all confused now and before I will go out and buy stuff that I will not need or will not work for me, I would like to get the oppinion of someone who has some experience with this. Do I have to worry about the capture-card beeing for PAL or NTSC? If so, is there one that can do both? Do I have to worry about the software beeing for PAL or NTSC? Is there one that can do both?

Does anyone have any such experiences or can give me some advice? I sure do appreciate any answers. Thank you.