ok, newbie, still love my Marantz VM5100 S-VHS hifi vcr, but how is the comparsion recording on vhs as opposed to a dvd recorder, and who is your choice of "quality" dvd recorders and disks....very important to me, it's mostly used for tv recording.... I will be at the ChampCar race in Edmonton at the end of July and want to record the event...dvd and programmable, I have the inaugural on vhs and it sucks....
Difference between VHS and DVD is night and day. Buy a DVD recorder, scrap the VHS, and never look back. The Toshiba D-R4 has the best picture quality of any recorder I've seen. I've only had it 5 months, so I don't know about reliability yet. Discs, Taiyo Yuden for DVD-R, Verbatim for RW.