Anybody have experience converting VCD/SVCD's to DVD. I have a couple that I bought in Ethiopia last year that I need to convert to DVD's so that I can play them on my home DVD player. I have found some arcane instructions here.

VCD and SVCD to DVD

Is there a better way??

Most DVD players do support VCDs. Sorry I don't have much experience with SVCDs.

Most do, but I replaced my old DVD played with a Samsung DVD Recorder and it will not rcognize or even load these VCD's.

Get back your old DVD player or buy a $50 (or cheaper) DVD player that will play them.

Messing around with conversions will take too much of your time and possibly result in a poorer quality copy anyway!

You might check out the latest version of Roxio Toast or Popcorn. If it works at all, though, the conversion process will be very CPU intensive and the image quality will suffer from the re-compression.

Best results will come from getting a multi-format DVD player and watching them on that. It'll be cheaper than buying Toast 8 at the MSRP.

VideoHelp has lots of info on players, including which ones can be converted to region free, so you can play DVDs that you buy abroad.

Depending on the copy protection on the VCD/SVCD, you might even be able to plug the player into your DVD recorder and do a direct copy.