Not to be outdone by BeyondTV's release of a DVD-burning plugin, the folks over at the SageTV forum have released an updated version of a DVD burning plugin that integrates with SageTV, another popular PC-based personal video recorder.
It takes a little more tinkering under the hood to install than the BeyondTV plugin, but for advanced users that means you can tweak the SageTV plugin to suit your needs. I tried out SageTV for a while before purchasing BeyondTV, and that was my general impression of most of the software in general. It's extremely powerful and customizable, but overall not quite as user friendly. And since I'm not the only person in my house using the PVR, I went with BeyondTV's simpler interface.
Okay, back to the SageTV plugin. It can create video or data DVDs with your SageTV recordings. You can customize the video compression settings. And you can use comskip to cut commercials before burning to DVD. I've always found comskip to be a risky venture. It does a pretty good job of detecting commercials, but when it's off, it can delete chunks of a TV show along with the commercials.
Unlike BeyondTV's plugin, the SageTV DVD burning plugin is free.
For more details and installation instructions, check out the forum post.
Thanks to Jason Meudt for the tip.
