Viability of cheap VHS capture

[Evit]

What do you want to digitalize anyway? Stuff recorded off of the TV on blank tapes or home video tapes?

Both actually. I'm mostly interested in preserving audio for a couple of tapes I have, but good video quality would be nice too.

I use the video signal only as reference (to re-make the credits in HD in my Italian preservations) so I plug it into my old DVR (Emtec Movie Cube Q800) which records digitally (but with an old compression format, not the best). All I care is to avoid audio compression because hi-fi stereo audio is usually what I want to preserve so I plug the audio output directly into the PC soundcard (and it should be a decent soundcard, even the cheapest dedicated soundcards are better than most integrated ones) and record it lossless via Adobe Audition (Audacity can be used too, of course). You also want to make sure to find the right setting of audio gain before recording the whole tape or you risk of finding yourself with clipping in the audio file, or a low volume. Play the tape in loud scenes and check what levels are you getting on Audacity/Audition. I generally let them reach a maximum of -3dB.