What's the simplest/best user friendly pakage to do this?
My wife has a Sony Vaio and transferring TV programmes to DVD, or feeding a video in to the line in and making a DVD is a simple, foolproof, quick process (I wish I could say the same for some of the other Vaio software).
A long time ago, I got a Dazzle 80, and to do the same thing seems a complex process with largely unsatisfactory results, tying up gb's upon gb's of space. Can someone recommend something simple, fast and foolproof?

It depends on the quality of the results you need. I have only done this once before, but I used a VHS to video in, combined with Roxio's Easy CD (Media?) Creator 7. It gave reasonably decent results when compared to the original videotape, and was pretty simple to use for basic material.

Sadly, I suspect you will trade ease of use and convenience with quality, no matter what package you choose.

My father had a large stack of old VHS tapes that he wanted to convert. He ended up getting a dual-deck VCR/DVD burner. (Sony, Samsung, GoVideo, and several others make such things.) It's literally a single button press and you're done. If you're doing bulk conversion, and you don't need any sort of fancy titles, then this is a fantastic solution. Plus, if you're tight on space in your home theater rack, this lets you get two features in the space of one. For every other funky feature of the deck (e.g., record shows straight to DVD), the user interface is beyond awful, but they at least make dubbing painless. They do detect Macrovision and refuse to dub commercial tapes, so it's no good if that's your goal.

Wow, this is a coincidence. I just saw this on "Attack of the Show" last night. They said it did a really good job and was quick and simple. I'm actually pretty interested in getting one myself, and today I was going to be doing a bunch of research on it.

Oh, and it looks like you can find it for around $230 to $240