vcr/ dvd recorder combos help

[leadman70]

is there any brand or model combo that will record copy protected vcr tapes to dvd, or a model that you can hack or firmware upgrade to bypass the protection? i have an old govideo dual vcr i bought a long time ago so i could copy any vcr tape to another tape. i was wondering if govideo made a dvd recorder/vcr combo that would do the trick. any help is appreciated. i have one of those little boxes to between a vcr and a dvd recorder but you get a much better copy with a combo unit.

[BJ_M]

they used to - but not anymore since macrovision will sue anyone that does try to make one ...

[hech54]

they used to - but not anymore since macrovision will sue anyone that does try to make one ...

....and combos are notoriously garbage.

[ZippyP.]

... but you get a much better copy with a combo unit.

"Much better"...How do you figure that? I haven't heard of any really good quality combo units, not that they don't exist. And there are some very good quality VCR's that can help restore old tape footage, far better than anything in a combo unit.

[leadman70]

i have a panasonic dmr-es35v and it said on the box that it will make a copy of a vhs tape to dvd that's better quality than the original, and i have to say it does look better than the original. maybe the old way i copied tapes wasn't so good. i used a cheap walmart magnovox vcr and copied it using a pioneer dvd recorder. i am looking at investing some money to do a high quality transfer from vhs to dvd, even copy protected tapes. what would be a good setup?

[trhouse]

The ES35V allows you to play VHS tapes with output from the DVD/VHS common output. Take that output though any external device ( color corrector, TBC, etc. ) and back into one of the INx inputs of the dvd recorder side. I have JVC video corrector connected up like that. There may be a slight difference in quality this way because the ES35V has to convert the VHS signal to composite output which it does not have to do when the tape output goes internally to the dvd recorder side.