Do "passive" converters help improve the picture coming from a VCR? If not, are there "non-passive" converters that do the trick? Or is there really no difference in picture quality and these just made for convenience in hooking up cables?
Unfortunately, you can't do any better than the signal that is already coming from the VCR. So, if you have composite output from the VCR, hooking it up to your tv's s-video input won't give any better picture quality.