getup said:
...but, overall, vhs-dvd is more like vhs-vhs minus a couple of quality points...basically, you can't get a better picture than what you start out with
That's not entirely true
There are various things that can be done to improve matters, including repairing picture faults, that simply aren't possible with a tape-to-tape copy. At the very least, you can produce a transfer that is identical to the original VHS with no generation loss (that's not to say it'll be any
good, it just won't be any worse than the original tape!). However, this requires some extra kit, like a TBC, and a pro or semi-pro capture card