If anyone has a spare (not)dead VHS machine and does not need it I have a good home for it.
PM me if you ever head up to Oxford. I have a high-end Panasonic (well, better than consumer grade anyway - has a bona fide heat sink out the back!) VHS I 've just finished using for digitizing family VHS tapes (a whole other story involving a Win XP USB video digitizer, driver searches to install on Win10, and an amazingly decent free video capture program from OBS). Would love for it to go to a good home!