All of the above advise is sound, but with you being a UK resident I have some information I need to share with you, that will no doubt unfortunately annoy you.

You say you are downloading movies off Kazaa, with the eventual intention of burning them to DVD so you can watch them on your set top box, correct?

You will not be able to do this. Why you ask? well. 99% of all the movies available on the Kazaa network originate in the U.S, which as a result mean they originate from the NTSC video format, not PAL, (PAL) which is the format used over here in the UK. Eventhough for the most part, the individual aspects of the NTSC format (like with any other) are moot after it has been converted into PC movie format, like .avi or .mpeg, but one essential component remains from the format ; the movie files frame rate.

NTSC frame rates are different to that of PAL, and there is no easy way to convert them once they are in a PC movie file format, in fact it's near impossible.

The resulting problem is this, what ever DVD application you use to help you convert a movie file into the correct MPEG2 format for DVD burning, will allways have to convert the movie file into PAL format so you can watch it on a UK set top box and T.V. The frame rate then of the original NTSC movie file is truncated to match the PAL standard (which has a different frame rate to that of the NTSC format, which results in dropped frames. What's the big deal with that you say? Well...

At first when watching the created movie on DVD, it will just seem a bit stuttery, nothing too extreme but annoyingly un-smooth, then as time passes, say about 10 minutes into the movie, the audio will slowly start to go out of sink, and after about 30 minutes of the movie, the audio will be so out of sink, it will not be watchable.

Programs like Virtualdub, have the ability to completely re-build a movie file into a different frame rate, which illiminates the stuttery video, but as I pointed out, that is only half of the problem. It's the audio part to the movie file which causes the main problems, as essentialy it becomes a completley different length and runs at a completely different speed (due to the change of frame rate and essential altered speed of the movie) to that of the converted video of the created movie file. It is unfortunately too complicated to work out the exact speed and duration the audio file needs to be to work nicely again with the video information, which I'm sad to say means that any NTSC born movie you convert and burn onto a DVD in the PAL format, for which it will need to be in for UK viewing, will end up being unwatchable.

I myself purchased a DVD writer with the intention of burning downloaded movies files to DVD to watch on my set top box, I soon realised it just isn't possible (because of the origins of the movie files on Kazaa).

And before someone says it, programs like TMPGenc only do what all other DVD creating applications do when converting a video movie file to another frame rate, or at least NTSC formats to PAL, it simply skips frames and truncates the video to match the desired frame rate, it does not properly re-build the frame rates and audio file speed and lengths, so they properly conform.

The only way you will successfully be able to duplicate and burn a movie file to a DVD, so it is watchable, will be if the movie file originated in the UK, (or other countries in Europe which use the PAL format) or has been encoded using a frame rate of 25fps which comforms to the PAL standard.

It sucks I know, but trust me it's true.