I'm in the UK, so I can't give you advice as to brand, but a friend of mine has one and she loves it! She's converted a few videos of mine (a copy of The Glass Slipper I taped off the TV, as that *still* isn't out on DVD), and she said it's really easy. She's not a techy person herself, so she went to a good store, told them what she wanted and asked them to recommend a good, solid machine that was easy to use.

If you have Panasonic over there, that's what she went with.