My wife bought a VCR/DVD combo for about $125 Canadian and it works great. You can copy to or from both with no hassles or of course record off the television. Regarding model preferences I have no idea. The one my wife bought was not a major brand name machine.

Obviously there is a learning curve and the more you use it the easier it becomes.

While the following may not help you with the model you buy here is how easy ours is.

Turn on the television and DVD/VCD machine. Insert tape and blank DVD. Set machine to tape. Press 'Dubbing' and off it goes. Now before that I did set my DVD to 3 hours as I knew each tape was about 2 hours only. The choices are in multiples of 30 minutes on this machine.

owbist, What type of DVD tape do you use to record on? Or doesn't it matter.

I used Memorex DVD+R and/or Sony DVD+R. The book suggested I could use +R -R or RW. These were bought because of the sale price, not because of any preference on my part although I stay away from off brands for that sort of purchase.

One point I overlooked in my original post is the need to finalise the DVD so it can be used on other DVD players

I have Philips DVD+RW and DVD+R Radio Shack suggest I use DVD+RW - thanks. Good post.

If I'm not mistaken, a 2 head VCR will work just fine. Four heads are only used in VHS playback for a clear picture in fast forward.

owbist, can you explain what you mean by finalise the tape.

Finalising a DVD makes it capable of being played on other players than the one the DVD was created on.

As all models will vary you would need to read the book for your model. It is a simple process and takes less than a minute to complete.Hope that answers it for you.

Thank you owbist and tomh_ga!!... I will be searching for sales on a recorder...

One more ?...Someone mentioned to me "copyright guard"..What does that mean? these are my home movies and I own them..

Carmie you have no problems regarding your own movies. This is the movie industry, they do not want you copying their movies. Personally I am not much of a movie person so I have never tried but I do understand it is possible to copy even those with the right software.

Thanks for all the info owbist.. it is very much appreciated.

This thread brings up a problem which I have ran into, so please forgive me if it looks like I am hi-jacking this thread, as that is not my intent.

I bought a dvd/vhs recorder/player around Thanksgiving and used it to transfer home vhs video tapes to dvd+rw discs. The discs will play on my pc using various video programs. All went well until I tried to transfer the disc contents to my pc hard drive so that I could edit them.

My pc has a 2 gig processor, 512 megs of ram, Win xp home with sp2 and a 160 gig HD with plenty of unused space.

I downloaded a program called dvd shrink 3.2 hoping it would allow me to transfer the disc to HD. It was a no go as I keep getting various error messages.

Does anyone know how to transfer files from a dvd disc to a pc hard drive? I'm baffled.

Thanks in sdvance for any help.

I have been told that Windows Movie Maker will move files to the hard drive for editing, but have never tried it.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but the difference between DVD-R and DVD-RW is that the RW's are Re-Writable...

If you want to safeguard something, put it on a DVD-R...can't be overwritten.

LOL webkat5!!..I just found that out today when I bought my dvd recorder!!...But.. the sales clerk had no idea what the difference was between DVD-R and DVD+R-..Do you know?

Check the link below for DVD+R and DVD-R for differences

Here is a link that might be useful: DVD differences

The only thing I have to add is this: while it is indeed simple to just use the appliance method to transfer vhs home movies to DVD, using a computer has MANY more benifits. I.E. editing out booboos, adding in music and or special effects. Titles and such are also a bonus only available with computer editing. back in the old days of DVD burners, they all came with awesome video editing software, but now barely come with archival software. most computers that come with a dvd burner have some form of movie editing software, but there are tons of simple programs available to perform the tasks above.

as far as best software to use, I like Roxio's software. My DVD is pretty simple and very powerfull at the same time.
John

Hi John..I love the idea of adding in music and special effects, but you are talking to a computer dummy!.... I will definitely check in to Roxio's....Thank you!

owbist...... "THANKS AGAIN" for all the info!...I went and bought a combo recorder, and it just as easy as you said it would be...I am so excited to be able to preserve my home videos and not see them deteriorate..

Happy new years everyone!....Carmie

Carmie I am glad your experience was as positive as mine, I confess I was pleasantly surprised at the simplicity of the setup.

John has a great idea if you are into adding music and other effects. Once you have burned your VHS tapes to digital format on DVD this could be copied to the computer and then enhanced. Then burn the finished product to another DVD. Today DVD blanks are mere pennies but turning your computer into a PVR (personal video recorder) can be a bit more expensive.

I have one computer set as a PVR but it needs a little more tweaking. Now the tapes on on DVDs this job has gone on the back burner for a while.