If not, you can tell your friend he'll need to drop another $500+ for what he'd probably see as a small improvement. These things are beyond the budget, patience and skill of most consumers- start with the inexpensive spare VCR and the $30 filter, and see if your friend finds the DVD copies acceptable. A skilled technician like LordSmurf will say this gear will give you 'crappy' results, but 'quality' is relative to your technical skills and budget: to achieve what VideoHelp experts feel is 'excellent' quality requires a hard-to-find $300 specialty VCR and a $200-500 Time Base Corrector, and/or a powerhouse computer with complicated software. This is how 99 out of 100 people dub their commercial VHS collection to DVD. When the tape gets to the end, stop both machines.

For each tape, you'd need to manually press 'play' on the VCR and 'Record' on the DVD section of your JVC. Connect the video line output of the external VCR to the line input of the filter box, connect the line output of the filter box to the video line input of your JVC, and connect the audio outputs of the VCR directly to the audio inputs of your JVC. You can get a decent second-hand Panasonic or Sharp VCR almost anywhere for almost no money, certainly under $25 (check Craig's List, or ask your friend if he still has his VCR). You will need to get an external VCR and a VHS 'protection filter' like this one. You need something to clear the recording lockout signal, but DVD/VHS combo recorders don't have the internal/external connections to attach it. So forget the notion you'll be able to do this project with an automated, 'set-it-and-forget-it' combo VHS/DVD unit. Even if you could track down something like a LiteOn, the models you'd need are old and were none too reliable to begin with.

Copy copyrighted vhs to dvd free