Well the program I use to create VCD's is TMPGEnc, it's pretty straightforward, but needs some work to optimize write time, also it can't take them directly from TV, you have to get another program, and hardware to convert it to either an AVI file, or MPEG file, also some codec's will not be accepted by the program, so just be sure to choose the right one, I didn't and wasted about a day of decoding/encoding, when I finally finished, the VCD was off a bit on screen size, and ended up chopping off about 1 inch off of each side of the video.
However depending on what system you're using you can get the stuff pretty cheap.
Like if you're running Linux, some guy actually created the hardware to make a tivo for you're computer, so you program when you want it to record, and when you want it to stop, it also automatically cuts out commercials (they send a different kind of signal, and the guy who created the hardware figured out the signal and learned how to filter it)
The actual hardware only costs about $10, and the software is free (being linux which is the most kick ass operating system out there, did I mention it too is free! heh)
As for a link I don't know where to get it, try searching for "Tivo"+"Linux" on google.