I got myself one of those DVD player/recorder from Best Buy in the Seattle for $83. I saved myself a lot of configuring the computer to convert my VHS/camcorder home movies to standard DVD. My Video tape player is now obsolete, I guess.
After much hair-pulling and figuring, that's the solution we came to as well. We used Firewire to get the digital video directly without converting to Analog. To do this, we needed a higher-end DVD player/recorder. Got a Sony for $350 CDN. Works great - just plug in the camcorder, pop in a blank DVD and press REC.
And yeah, it records TV, or your old VHS tapes (through a tape player) as well. AND you can do some fairly decent editing (like titles, chopping the video into chapters, moving them around...Can't put your head on Swarsenegger's body, though
)
druid