Again: I am not writing all of this to debate with you, that conversion is the best, because i agree with you in that point and to make it clear once and for all: i do fundamentally understand the issue of contention here. You dont need to try, to make me look like a dumbnut.
If the effort is the same, than its funny how it didnt happen in a past decade, but i hope it will happen at least in the next and this thread exposed some opportunity. Capturing is a non-destructive setup (to the hardware) and a simple read me file would be enough, so that it is manageable for anyone. You can setup everything in less than a hour and it would also work with nearly any LDP.
Conversion has a potential risk of being destructive to the hardware, even for someone who knows what he is doing and the setup will differ from system to system. It can only be done by very experienced people and is a time consuming setup.
And you seriously think that the effort is the same and the only efficiency argument here is cost? Mmmmh, ok. I hope you are right, partly because the timeframe is not huge and if the bit-rot progressed to a point of no return, we will have no opportunity and ALL the information is lost forever, not just the picture and VBI (which would be enough, for a good emulation).