There are and you can get cheap noname Chinese ones for as low as $10. Unfortunately most of them are terrible. I've played with it on and off for years and ev

There are and you can get cheap noname Chinese ones for as low as $10. Unfortunately most of them are terrible. I've played with it on and off for years and even gotten individual tools for $100+ but still have issues. It's a bit of a mess with PAL/NTSC, different recommended settings, and at the end of the day you still need a high quality VCR to extract all the data. Those tend to go for hundreds of dollars here. You also need a time base corrector (some VHS have them built in I believe) to avoid dropping frames and causing desync. A common suggestion is to just get a VHS->DVD recorder and then rip the DVD. You lose out on quality but it usually works and will save you a ton of time. The suggestion by OP is probably if you truly want to maximize the quality.