Ecconomic stimulus = JT on DVD?

Okay, so I broke down and finally bought a vcr/dvd recorder combo (the kind that can tape your VHS to a DVD) only to find that the previous VHS recorder that I made master tapes of Jura Tripper on looked really AWFUL on the new VCR. Actually, ANYTHING I had recorded on it, from tv or dvd or LD all looked awful. Bleeding black lines all over the place, and the tracking didn't help any.
So I figured, no harm, just hook up the LD player and record straight to DVD. Only.. My disk 1 of Jura Tripper for some reason won't read now. Back or front. So I'm ran a test on disk 2 (episodes 5-8) and recorded the opening to see how it looked. Playback on the DVD player worked great. But when I put the DVD-R into my computer to move the file there, the dang thing wouldn't detect the DVD at all. So I thought, maybe it's just an old DVD player drive. So I popped the disk into Cam's laptop. No dice. "Incorrect peramiter". Cam said maybe I should fill up the disk, not just have the opening. So I'm recording the whole LD currently. Hope it works. Even then, I'll have to figure out what's wrong with disk 1.
:(

Okay, figured out I needed to "finalize" the disk to get it to play in any other DVD player. All Good, WMP plays it fab on the computer now, but the files are all .vob and .pud and things, not .avi or .mpg which means I'll need to find a converter program. Sheesh.
I dunno. The Gods of Anime just DON'T want JT in the net!