For anyone who's put their old vhs tapes on dvd I'd like to know if you were happy with the results. Did you lose quality (sharpness,ect). My last attempt a few years ago wasn't very successful. The results were videos that had lost a lot of sharpness. At the time I was using a pc and a HP DVD writer with my VCR playing the tapes onto the HD of the pc. The instructions for the DVD writer said that a vcr with Svideo out woud give a better quality result than the regular composite (I think it was). Since then I'm been looking around for a vcr with Svideo out at Garage sales and such,not wanting to buy a new vcr when it would only be used for this purpose....
I have a JVC Pro Mini-DV/Super VHS deck with built in DV port and the quality is very good when converting from VHS to DVD. I import into iMovie most times (sometimes use Final Cut), and then straight to iDVD.
I've also gone through my mini-dv camera to convert the analog signal from another VCR into DV to pass through to the computer. I'm sure the quality has a lot to do with the analog to digital conversion that takes place. The deck was probably $2k new, I picked it up used for about $350 used a year ago. Probably get one for even less now if you look around.
That's probably your best bet if you want decent quality, but the digital camera pass through is almost as nice...