Yeah, the thing that got my attention is that all those advantages spill over into the VCR world, which will make tweaking the picture for encoding much more accurate as far as "what you see is what you get" point of view.
These are videos that can't be replaced, family events, weddings, etc., and conversation is time-consuming. In the end, it seemed worthwhile to pick up to help ensure decent results. I still plan to grab one when the funds are there.