I would have thought that if the VHS tapes are of your own material then copy protection wouldn't be a problem as it won't have been added when it was made. You should be able to copy from from format to the other without problems. You can watch the footage back as you do it, I personally wish there was some kind of high speed dubbing option so it only takes half the time

I know you can get magic little boxes that strip out that protection, but I have never used one myself and would assume that it would only further reduce the quality of the picture.

Cheers

Cris.