Unable to burn a good quality DVD

[lanwan_guy]

Looking for some guidance here.

I'm attempting to video capture TV shows off my Bell 9200 PVR on to my PC and burn them to DVDs. The challenge I have is that when I burn the shows to disks, the quality is terrible and choppy. I have tried various software packages and each produce varying levels of the same issue I even bought a new burner in hopes that might help. My system config and software are a follows:

Pentium 4, 3.2GHz
2GB 3200 DDR400 RAM
2x 250GB SATA drives
1x 160GB external USB2 drive
ATI TV-Wonder Elite for capture (tried RCA connectors and coax)
LG GSA-4040B Internal DVD-burner
HP DVD640e USB2 DVD-burner

ATI PowerCinema 3
Nero Vision 7
Ulead VideoStudio 9 (full eval version)
Adobe Premiere Elements 2 (full eval version)

If I play back the DVDs in my PC they look and sound great. However, in my Panasonic DVD player they playback choppy and grainy. Where as in my car DVD player, they in may cases are not even recognised.

I have also tried various quality levels on both single and dual layer DVDs. (Wasted a fair bit on disks and have made no headway on where the issue is.) I thought maybe the ATI card was not cutting it for capture quality, hwoever, I would have expected the same playback quality on my PC as my DVD player if it was the card. So I am leaning more towards either my selection and/or use of the capturing and burning software.

I do recognize that the overall quality is being reduced further by copying onto my PVR and then copying again onto my PC and again onto DVD. But I just can't understand why playback of either the DVD or the captured video on my PC is so good, while on a traditional DVD player is so bad.

Thoughts/Comments would be very appreciated.