For the record, I used the Mainconcept encoder that came with Vegas. To complain about blockiness on a picture that, in most cases, can only be made sense of by listening to the audio and having a good memory of the events of the film, is just ridiculous. We are talking about making a pristine copy of a video that dances all over screen, has no resemblance to the original colors, and what colors there are are blooming way beyond NTSC standards! Anyone who thinks they are going to come up with an exceptionally better transfer with another encoder is not keeping in mind the reality of what a bad copy the tape is, and is really just looking for something to nitpick - or just trying to come up with a reason to get their hands on the tape.

Regardless, all we are talking about here is polishing a turd. You get what you got.