Help with which DVR to buy. My needs detailed in post.

[babybreese]

I have 100's of hours of VHS to transfer, selections from 15 min to 120 min. Dozens of hours of just music acts from the various talk shows, so I'd be making discs of 20-25 clips per 2 hour disc. I have VHS tapes going back 20 years and need to get them into the digital realm.
So making menu's or accurate chapters a must. Are there any stand alone burners that can rival the menu options of a computer set up? I am not computer savvy AT ALL myself but am very impressed with the near pro looking computer created menus I have seen.
Also hi speed copies of the discs I make is a must.
Also a hard drive for recording off digital cable and also for copying other friends DVD-R's of similiar non copywrite / guarded material, that I can then burn hi speed copies of.
Any help greatly aappreciated!
thanks in advance

[bnbhoha]

I would suggest the Panasonic EH50 for you. I have the Pioneer 533 which is very similar in many aspects, but from what I've read the Panny has a slightly better picture for vhs transfers (not by much though but it's better and some will argue that it's not). It lacks a dv input for camcorders but the new model coming out in the next couple of months should have it (pioneer 533 has it). Also, the menus on the Panny are better looking than the Pioneers but nothing beats a PC. The panasonic also has frame accurate editing in highspeed mode whereas the Pioneer is usually a second or two off (It does I-frames). Bothy machines offer high speed dubbing and Pioneer is able to do dual layered discs.

You will definitely get better looking menus from a computer. I like Tmpeg dvd author. It's very easy to use and you can create your own backgrounds from pictures and add music to the background. It also allows you to do frame accurate editing; it cost's $100.

As far as copying your dvd-rs. I would recommend doing it via PC. You can copy a whole disc usually in under 15 minutes. VERY very simple to do. Just to show you how simple:
1. download a free program (now defunct) called dvddecrypter
2. Under the mode tab, select ISO read and your destination on the hard drive. This will create an image of your disc on the hard drive.
3. Once that's done, go to the mode tab and select ISO write. This will burn the image on the disc and your done. Simple as that.

I would recommend buy a NEC pc dvd burner on newegg.com for around $45 delivered. Good luck