yesvideo and similar companies vs diy scanning: cost and newbie-friendliness

My family has dozens of small 8mm film home movies. We separated the 3 inch reels into "batches". The first batch was given to yesvideo for a dvd transfer around 2003. We recieved the dvd, and got the film back, albeit in two large reels instead of 10 small reels. For whatever reason, we never got the second half of reels digitized. I would like some suggestions as to what to do next.

I have no experience in loading film, nor do I own any kind of telecine or capture equipment. However, I have heard that homemade transfers, when done right, can look better than companies like yesvideo, not to mention being uncompressed and in higher resolution. However, since I have no experience, I am afraid that I would ruin the film if I did any such thing.

What do you suggest? Buy telecine and capture equipment and do it myself? Give the second half of reels to Yesvideo? Give it to a different company known for high quality restorations?

I guess nobody has a responce?

Moviestuff (www.moviestuff.tv) makes a variety of excellent telecine equipment at reasonable prices.  I did the puggo editions with their cheapest units (workprinterXP and workprinter16).  I found them easy to use, and their customer support to be superb.  Some of their more recent products look really enticing (albeit a bit more pricy).  Even easier to use, too.

In doing these kinds of transfers, the initial capture from film is the most important step.  The advantage to doing it yourself is that you can run as many passes as you want with different settings, until you like what you get.  Whereas a company is going to probably run one pass and move on to the next customer.  They aren't doing it because they're interested, and can't afford to waste time running multiple dubs.

Define "cheap". College is draining my money away, so I doubt I can pay for anything more than a couple hundred, and even that is an exaggeration of how much money I have.

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