Need help buying DVD burner for Christmas gift

[chirpy]

First off great site!

My problem is I bought my dad a DVD burner for Christmas, he wants to be able to transfer his home VHS movies to DVD. The burner I bought does not capture video, and I am confused what I need to buy. I see many posts about various formats (mpeg2, etc...) so I need to make sure I buy the right kind of capture card so this will work.

When capturing the video from VHS what format needs to be used so the DVD can play in normal DVD players?

Anyone have suggestions on what kind of video capture card I need to buy? Or any other piece of hardware?

p.s. Here's the DVD burner I bought:
http://www.staples.com/catalog/browse/sku.asp?PageType=1&sku=513120

[gpwake]

If he just wants to do basic VHS to DVD recordings you may want to look into getting a stand alone DVD Recorder.

Depending on what his system specs are you may have to upgrade several things within his current PC to be able to capture VHS footage without dropping frames and or overall video quality.

For ease of use a DVD Recorder is the way to go.

[chirpy]

Thanks for reply gpwake!

He would rather have a DVD burner so it could also be used to make backups of the stuff on his pc.

What kind of specs should I be looking for on the capture card?

[gpwake]

What are his system specs? This will really tell the tale as to which route to take when considering exactly how to capture the video.

[chirpy]

Off the top of my head:

P4 2.0Ghz
Win XP
40 GB hard drive
128mb Geforce Mx400 (I think) - only has TV-out connection
256MB RAM (he'll probably upgrade to 512)

[chirpy]

Do you guys think this one will work?

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?sid=3FE23F805ACB617F&product%5Fcode=5...579&pfp=BROWSE

I read about it in the Capture Cards section and it sounds like a good deal for the price. I'm just not sure about all this formatting and stuff.

[gpwake]

With those system specs he shouldn't have alot of problems. I am not sure how good the AVerDVD EZMaker Video Capture Card works. Check out the Capture cards section to see how other users have rated it.

The ASUS TV Tuner card seems to be a good one. I think you can pick it up at www.newegg.com for a reasonable price, but the best thing to do is to read through the user reviews in the capture cards section.

[kano]

he'll need a firewire card, (50$ appx.) and he will need aleast 512mb of ramm. That hard drive sounds pueney but it should work. But stand alone dvd recorders are expensive as hell so i would go with the burner

[Craig Tucker]

he'll need a firewire card

What for ?. He is capturing analogue footage from VHS, not transferring a DV digital stream.

[kano]

sorry about that, your right. I'm just not an analog kinda guy. I still say those stand alone dvd recorders are expensive.