Hi DC,

There are companies that can do transfers, including the older betamax format. A quick Google search on "video transfer dvd rate per hour" turns up quite a few hits ranging from $30/hour to $110/hour to $800/day. I don't know if they'd want to touch this project though because of the copyright aspect, let alone the fact it's porn. For 100 tapes, the cost is going to be prohibitive, unless you are the person that just won the Powerball here in OR. :)

You can now buy stand-alone DVD burners (no computer needed) that take any video source:

Through CompUSA: tinyurl.com/eyj6p

tinyurl.com/7dw49 $120 (DVD+ only)
tinyurl.com/4do8e $180 (supports DVD-)
tinyurl.com/eylke $220 (supports DVD-)

These are just a few of the possibilities and are not endoresements (I've not used any of these).

An electronics engineer friend of mine who deals with video every day and would know of such things recommends burning as DVD-R to be the most compatible across all DVD players.

For the betamax tapes, eBay lists players: tinyurl.com/7weeu
If that link doesn't work, go to Consumer Electronics -> VCR -> Beta.

You could hook the video/audio out lines of the betamax to the video/audio in of the above DVD burners.

If you want to use a computer, you'd need a video capture type card and a DVD burner drive, plus plenty of hard disk space. A fast processor would be needed in order to compress the raw video/audio to MPEG2 (which can take a LOT of time). Using a computer would be a better option *if* you needed to edit the video as well as burn the DVD's, but since you just want to transfer to DVD, a stand-alone burner is probably the best option.

I do video editing of vacation home videos so I use my Mac G4 Powerbook, a Sony DCR-TRV340 camcorder (which allows analog audio/video input pass-through to firewire output), and lots of disk space via external firewire drives.