VHS video tapes for smart TVs?
 

I have captured several VHS tapes using Hauppauge USB Live 2. The captures are 10 Mbps MPEG-2 (.ts), 720x480, 29.97 FPS, Interlaced. The first use of these files was for DVDs which went well. Now, someone wants them on a thumb drive to watch on a Smart TV. What should I convert them to? Thank you.

The smart TV can probably play those files, in which case your best option for quality is probably to play them as-is instead of recompressing.

Thank you for response. I have a 3 year old Samsung Smart TV with a thumb drive slot and they won't play on it.

Do you get an error message from the TV?
What is the exact model # of the TV?
Can you browse to the files at all?

File type not supported

Okaaaaay...
That’s a start.
Don’t you think the TV model would help us?
You could use a little company service known as Google, and find the owners manual.
Basically you are telling us you have a vehicle that’s going clickety thumpity clack and you want a diagnosis of whatever is wrong. Could be a tire, drive shaft, loose motor mount, or a pedestrian caught under the chassis.

I found out the TV will definitely play MP4s. So, the question now becomes do I convert my .ts files to SD MP4s (720x480) or HD MP4s (1920x1080)?

MP4 is a video container, not a video codec. You want to check the video/audio codecs supported by your TV. You don't want to do any kind of upscaling, let the TV do it for you.

You can use ffmpeg to put the video into a new container format:

I would try that first because it's quick and the conversion would be lossless.