I'm new here too, but I couldn't help but jump in with my two cents worth. Please forgive me if I ramble on a bit.
I have been collecting Chan movies for a while now, and short of the wonderful quality of the films aired on Fox, I have been quite happy with the quality of Tory's. But like you, I kinda object to paying $10 or more for a B&W B flic even if the quality is exceptional. Still, given the abysmal quality of some others, one simply must make a choice.
An alternative certainly is to trade movies with other collectors. E.G. I just discovered Mr. Moto. I would love to swap some CC copies for Mr. Moto copies, if anyone is interested ;)
I have been making my own DVDs for a while now, and while am far from expert, I think I can offer some commentary on the topic. All DVDr's are not created equal, even using the same media, and the same source material.
wrt the issue of compression, I will first state that the quality of playback at a given compression rate is largely determined by the sampling rate of the original material, and the quality of the original encoder. Second, low action B&W films do not require nearly as many bits as modern color action flics. So three CC movies on a DVDr (about 3.5 hrs or material) does not scare me too much if I do it myself, but I do not routinely trust others to deliver at this grade.
All I can advise is to buy one and view it and see if it is acceptable. It *might* be just fine, or it might not.
I have been recording old westerns lately from the satellite for my own amusement. I find that putting four one-hour movies on a DVDr at a very low bit rate using my equipment, produces playback on my 100" projection system that is almost indistinguishable from the original airing. This is at a rate under 2 MBit/s, using B&W source material that doesn't have a huge amount of action.
On the other hand, my daughter has a standalone DVD recorder (A panasonic I think, but I'm not sure) and putting more than one such movie on a disc with it results in digital artifacts and tiling. I find it acceptable for color action movies only at the highest encoding rate it will manage, and then I notice slight artifacts on fast motion.
From this experience I would NOT buy a standalone DVD recorder. I have seen output from two of them (I have a friend who has one too, a different brand/model from my daughters) and they are both severely wanting.
One more data point, I have a cheapie Adaptec AVC-2200 encoder that I use to digitize VHS tapes. It produces output at a rate of around 5 MBit/s that is clearly inferior to my quasi-homebrew off-air system recording at <3.5 MBit/s. It's ok for making DVD copies of my VHS collection (soon to be sold as scratch tapes at the local flea market ;) but if I were recording a higher quality source, I wouldn't use it. It's acceptable, indeed better than the standalones, but far from state of the art.
So in the end it depends on just how serious you are about getting quality movies vs. how much you're willing to spend. If you routinely spend $20 for hollywood's latest action flic, then $10 for a good, clean copy of a Chan film does not sound so bad. But if you're planning on buying them in lots of 40 or so, that's still a lot of money ;)
