At this stage in recordable DVD development, it's worth considering purchasing a recorder that will do both + and - R/RW. We do not yet know which will emerge as the winning format, and it is true that only -R will work on a lot of existing consumer DVD players (although my money's on DVD+R/RW as the emerging victor).
New players are coming out that can cope with +R and even DVD RAM. Consumer DVD recorders are also available, although most use -R (the older technology).
I posted a while back discussing the merits of these 3 formats, so won't enter into discussion here.
The best consumer DVD players not only do MP3, VCD et al, but also DivX - but these are few and far between (as I write...). Sony's SACD looks to me like a bit of a dead duck - ie not a reason to buy a particular DVD player. Although the quality is superior to regular CD, DVD audio will (fairly obviously) soon surpass it. A better reason to buy any consumer model is Component support - even if you don't currently plan to use it as an interconnect method. In time you will, as other devices move to this high quality connectivity (better than SCART or S-Video).
The point I'm making is that if you are on the verge of buying a DVD recorder or player, think carefully before you part with cash - even if they are cheaper now. There's too many "must-have" features that may prove "mustn't haves" in the very near future.
I do not (yet) own a - or + R recorder, but I do have a DVD RAM recorder, FWIW. My consumer player is a Cambridge Audio CD55, which is of superlative quality - but doesn't do DIV/X. Fortunately it was cheap
To record VHS, I have a Haupauge WinTV card, which takes the S-Video output directly from my Sony VHS recorder. It has a normal video in as well, and I've successfully used a SCART conversion lead to connect non-Sony machines to my PC. The packaged recorder software records direct to AVI, and to make movie discs, I simply use Nero to burn VCDs. The quality is nowhere near that of DVD - but is useable - and this solution is very cheap (less than £50/$75 for the Haupauge card).
InterVideo DVD Copy is nice, cheap software that allows basic editing as well as copying - and thus the transfer from VHS to a DVD encodable format. It's also DivX compliant
Hope this helps