Thanks for your reply Stream Recorder.

Actually my files are already in WMV, but not in WMV9 (which is what the Pioneer DVD Player requires). I was able to figure out thru a freeware (any video converter) that these news casts are streamed in WMV3 so my captured newscasts are all in WMV3!! (I have been spoiled because my creative zen portable media player has no trouble with these WMV3 videos they play without conversion or any extra effort -- just drag and drop -- but the Pioneer DVD player is much more finicky.

So, armed with that knowledge, I was trying to ascertain what would be more efficient time wise -- to "encode" from WMV3 into WMV9 or "convert" into Divx which I already knew the player would accept. Using any video converter it took 100 minutes to "encode" the 25 minute news cast into WMV9 (three times as long as it took to capture the stream -- yikes not a great outcome). The "conversion" into Divx was somewhat faster (but by no means fast) so my conclusion is that converting to Divx is better than trying to encode into WMV9 if a device can accept either.

That being said between the stream capture time and the file conversion time it's still a long process. Is there a way to capture the WMV3 stream and as it is being captured to be able to save it as Divx (.avi). In other words capture in WMV and convert into Divx at the same time in a time efficient manner?? Maybe that is too much to hope for?