Hi Chris

I suspect that most "professional" transfers (as available through High Street photo shops etc) will just be done to a domestic (although maybe decent quality) domestic Hard drive/dvd machines.

Certainly many years ago I had some PAL to NTSC VHS conversion done and went to the company to pick them up (it was a rush job) and realised that they just used an ordinary multi-format Sansumg recorder - perhaps 'ordinary' is the wrong word but I went out soon after and bought myself one off the shelf.

You will certainly get better results from using a good domestic unit rather than a computer. If found that there was often a time delay on sound which became very obvious the longer the clip ran. I've not had that problem on a dometic unit.

Having said that the editing facilities are more basic. If I need more than very basic editing I will load the domestic unit copy into the pc and re-author it.

Not a great deal of help to you but it may give you a few thoughts.

Nick