I have a DVD/VCR combo but last year I spent a few months converting all my VCR tapes to DVDs using a DVD recorder, so don’t watch VCR tapes much. Worked very well, and I want to tell you, tapes DO degrade, especially if they get played a lot. I have some old music video tapes that you can hardly make out the music on. But there ARE older tapes that look and sound just fine. Very uneven.
I have a VCR as well (with Videoplus!) which I keep around for my collection of Doctor Who tapes (three for a quid in a charity shop, slowly being replaced at one for a fiver on DVD), the un-Lucas’d version of THX-1138, complete with ad breaks from when the Sci-Fi channel was the Sci-Fi channel and the original Godzilla, with an introduction from Vids.
It’s for that and my Wii that I keep my tiny CRT TV around too.
Have a DVD/VHS combo, use it pretty regularly for the DVDs, about once or twice a year for the VHS. Lots of old Disney, lots of other old stuff that looks just as good on the VHS with the ancient TV as it does on DVD the newer one (sometimes better because the quality is so low that watching on the new TV is just tragic).
I don’t even have a DVD player hooked up anymore. I have TiVo with a wireless connection to my PC. Everything I download I can watch instantly on the TV.
I digitized old VHS tapes with the following if anyone else is interested in doing the same.: