My suggestion is getting something custom built.

Here's a company:
http://www.maincomp.com/shop/showcasep
http://www.compubuzz.com
http://www.newegg.com

I've bought from compubuzz and newegg before.

Depending on if you need a monitor or not. YOu could probably spend about 700-900 without monitor to satisfy your needs.
My suggestions are:

512mb Ram minimum
1GHz+ CPU
Windows XP or 2000 professional.
80+ 7200RPM Gig Hard drive. DVDs are big the more space the better, Faster that space is the better.
DVD-R drive.
You may elect to purchase sonic dvd it.
Or Pinnical Studio DVD software.

you may also visit
http://www.vcdhelp.com
to see how they convert Video to DVD, and other digital formats.
Yes some things they talk about are of questionable legality. But the techniques they use are very good for legit reasons such as yours.

Pinnical sells probably the easiest to use software. Which is also rather powerful.

Well good luck.

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Just my two cents.

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You should be able to do a 2400+, DVDR, 80GB of 7200RPM IDE, & 1GB DDR Memory easily within your budget. This machine will accomodate your multimedia needs.

If you purchase the Sony DRU500A (the one I bought) it includes MyDVD and RecordNow Max SE. Both are fairly spartan, but they do work. You can always upgrade later to DVD-It or Reel-DVD for authoring, and RecordNow Max (full) or Nero for Burning.

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Ron

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I totally agree with Frigo about the video cards. In my opinion Nvidia cards ar as a rule much better than ATI cards.

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