It's weird, I have a 10 year old Symphonic/Funai VCR, HiFi Stereo that still plays great, and I've used it a lot, especially during the first 5 years. It was a Christmas gift back in '96. It actually has great tracking, and the transport handles the tapes well, and has some editing functions on it. Exception rather than the rule :p

Anyhow, combo units. My parents bought a Sony (rebadged Samsung) DVD player/VCR combo unit. The DVD player broke within 2 years time (and it was hardly used.) Right now they bought a Panasonic combo, which seems to work much better. For my one set of old TVs, I have a Go-Video (rebadged LG) DVD/VHS combo. It was one of the cheapest ones on the shelf, yet it works great. It is almost 4 years old, and haven't had a problem. I typically pop in a DVD and set it for repeat, which it does for almost 16 hours at day at times. Sometimes do the same on the VCR.

But overall I prefer standalone units myself. I also prefer 10-30 year old VCRs anyhow.

I have a 3 year old Sony DVD-Recorder (first generation). It has decent picture quality, at least down to the 3 hour mode. It makes decent copies of VHS, Beta, DV, CATV, etc.

But for the best quality, I use my PC. Like ha1156w said, that Canopus ADVC-100 is a great card. I don't have one myself, though I do have a Hauppauge TV and FM tuner card with S-Video input. I can capture raw avi or any type of compression format I choose with any software. I have my own little process that I'm working on to restore my tapes to DVD. Lots of filters and cleaning up the video and audio. I also have a entry level JVC SVHS pro grade VCR with a time base corrector and noise filter I use for this as well. I've had a friend give me a 3rd generation EP copy of something. When I was done, you could not tell it came from a tape of that quality.