DVD recorder advice, take 2: Older TV w/o S-video a problem?

[PRW]

Thanks for the information you guys provided in the other thread I started looking for info on a potential DVD recorder purchase, I've been following the leads you gave me and sort of have a better idea of how to proceed.

However, I have one more significant question to ask. As I said in my other post, our main TV right now is a several-years-old Sanyo 25-inch with no S-Video or audio/video component connections. All it has is the RF jack for the antenna. It's given us flawless performance, at least to our eyes, since the day we purchased it and we really haven't seen any need to replace it until now regardless of the antiquated connections.

Our current DVD player, as I mentioned, is a Sanyo DVD/VCR combo unit which does have an S-Video jack and audio/video component jacks. We're right now running it just with the RF connector from our cable into the DVD/VCR input and the output going into the TV, no separate RF converter unit, just the cables, and we are getting decent performance with it, although I know it's not as good as it would be if we had a newer TV with the proper connections.

As I said in my first post, my No. 1 priority for getting a DVD recorder is to copy some old VHS and 8mm tapes we've shot of the kids for archival purposes. I think I said it's literally been years since we recorded anything off TV, we're just not big into that.

I'd imagine that running direct lines out from a VCR into the DVD recorder, the quality of the picture you'd be getting on the TV screen wouldn't be that relevant to the quality of the copy you were getting from the VHS tape to the DVD (if I'm wrong here, please correct me).

However, if we had the ability to record stuff from TV onto disc instead of bulky videotapes, it might be a bit of a different story and we might record stuff off TV more often. And as best I can tell, we would have to get an RF converter box to make a DVD recorder work with this TV, and we would see significantly less performance recording off TV with that kind of setup than we would with S-Video and/or component connections.

So I'm wondering if it might not be best to hold off on this and maybe focus on upgrading our TV first, so that we wouldn't have to fool with an external RF converter, extra cables, something else that would have to be plugged into the surge protector, etc., before getting into DVD recording.

Any additional advice here would be appreciated. Thanks again!

[handyguy]

Many recorders have RF outs on them. Or even if they don't, you can get an RF adapter from Circuit city for $20...

My panasonic recorders have special filters that clean up VHS to make it look great, better than originals.

[billcsho]

Or you can just use your VHS VCR as RF modulator. Of course, you cannot use the same VCR as modulator and video source when you are copying a VHS video onto DVD. Very often, a VCR is cheaper than a modulator.