This is a common question, but I'm losing my mind, and most posts (and reviews, etc.) on the subject are months old now.

My needs are pretty basic. In order of importance:
* Solid VHS support (most-decent output, least likely to munch tapes);
[If anyone can name a discrete VCR in this day and age, feel free]
* HDMI output for convenience / future-proofness;
* DVD support with pillarboxing / scaling control in the player.

Any ability to record or do transfers or so on is a bonus I'm not really concerned with (same with presence of an ATSC tuner), but wouldn't be averse to paying for if it's required to get a solid tape movement. I certainly don't expect VHS->1080i to look great, but (assuming it's possible to buy a VHS player that'd last anymore) it'd beat having to pile up discrete ADC hardware in five years' time.

More detail:
We have a couple "legacy" sets and one decent 1080i DLP set. HDMI is the future (or the closest thing to it) but the big set will *not* do any of its own scaling/zooming/letterboxing/pillarboxing of HDMI input. If there's a decent combo unit out there, I might as well 'standardize' on it so I'll have spares when one inevitably craps out.

re: the big set, I purchased an extremely generic "upscaling" DVD player for kicks, and discovered that it will happily scale DVD content to 1080i... but without applying any of its own letterboxing or pillarboxing, 4:3 content ends up stretched... and the common case of 16:9 content letterboxed into 4:3 ends up stretched as well, ugh. So *two* types of scaling are obviously required; regular pillarboxing for actual 4:3, but also some way to chop the letterbox off wide content that was letterboxed into 4:3.

At this point, I'd "save money" (ha) and get a combo unit since *both* VHS and DVD are about to go obsolete -- and since the only worthwhile option in "new" discrete VCRs seem to be JVC D-VHS units with movements of questionable repute.

My price range is $40-$500 here, suggest anything you haven't been completely dissatisfied with and I'll happily research it.

Might as well make it clear: I'm *not* talking about zooming 2.35:1, I'm talking about taking the top and bottom off 4:3 that contains 16:9 (or what would become a proper-aspect image in 16:9)... but I really care most about the VHS problem, first. :)

Well, I just gave up and ordered two (refurb?) Samsung DVD-V9700 units. Advantage: They were just under $50 ea. before shipping.

It took a lot of squinting, but the DVD-V9800 appears to be the same thing with a redesigned (shiny) case.

I'm disappointed for a few reasons -- for one thing, these don't do ADC and provide HDMI output for the VHS side; for another, they don't even have S-Video(!) output. From vague memory, the lack of S-Video might be a Samsung quirk; I don't know what's popular in Korea (observe the S-Vid vs. SCART situation between the US and Europe, and then the S-Vidification of SCART, which threw me for a loop when I learned about it)... On the other hand, I don't think LG suffers the same quirk.

What pushed me over in the end was that:

* anything more expensive was not likely to have a better tape movement (hard to justify D-VHS, and there have been complaints about the actual movements in the JVC D-VHS units),
* anything more expensive was likely to have issues with its other components (not-quite-there-yet encoding hardware in anything with a DVD recorder requiring noisy fans; reputations for crashes or software flakiness of a thousand different kinds; almost everything with an ATSC tuner having a reputation for the same glacial slowness that our set's built-in has..)***
* the DVD player in the Samsung line is one of the few to actually have that aspect adjustment I need clearly defined and labeled (I believe they call it "EZ View" or something. At least it's right on the remote and not buried in a menu, and should handle all the transforms required on a display that does none itself.)

Unfortunately it's hard to say if the scaler had any thought put into it (re: image quality) at all; I guess I'll report back. I'm not the hugest videophile but I am very sensitive to blocky artifacts of all types (including what you'd get from cheap scaling with no attempt at 'DSP' to smooth it out).

While I anticipate a day where displays, especially "computer" displays easily retargeted for home theater,** just have HDMI or DisplayLink or another unified digital port, I guess "composite in" will still be present on most equipment for legacy reasons long after these players have hit their MTBFs. And if they do survive past that as Our Last VCRs, I guess a discrete adapter won't be too pricey by then (after all, you get a decent one now in a $30 graphics card, but I don't watch enough video to make the HTPC hobby worthwhile)...

The sad thing is that, by not just making a token effort to put all outputs on HDMI, Samsung has made this line much less idiot-proof. Now I have to train everyone to switch inputs on the set depending which side of the device they're using, oh well. Hard to argue with $50 and a least-worst interface.

**I'm figuring that, as LEDs get better and brighter, projectors (of the front-projection, standalone variety) will get cheaper and cheaper, especially given the great impact of China on the manufacturing scene. If you're picking a TV out there (and in some regions, potentially pooling cash with other to do so) do you get a fragile 40" flat-panel to hang on one wall, or a little lightweight box that can throw up a 150" picture to share with your friends (and that can be locked away safely when not in use)? After the lamp and the optics, the expense in current projectors is from the complexity of the input boards to support the plethora of signals business users demand (can't put the CEO off because his laptop doesn't support HDMI), so those legacy inputs would be the first to go.

***Seems like far too many ATSC tuners wait for a keyframe or a no-signal event before processing input events. I have a few early (and buggy-in-different-ways) Accurian tuners that don't suffer from this (sure you'll see black screens until you wait, but you can keep scrolling to the channel you think you want to watch)... I guess we'll have to wait for the cutover for manufacturers to stop being stupid.

What's VHS?