I'm looking for a stand-alone system that will connect to a TV. MY PC is too old to run a burner. Do the recorders I see on the shelves of Best Buy and Wal-Mart have their own hard drives...or will I have to play a DVD in my standard player and record what plays on the TV at the same time (like using a VCR)? If the latter is the case, will my recorded copy be of less quality than one burned on a dedicated DVD burner? I do have a pretty high tech receiver with digital decoding and the works, but only a standard TV and not a digital one.

Thanks in advance,
ViCAP

Quoted: I'm looking for a stand-alone system that will connect to a TV. MY PC is too old to run a burner. Do the recorders I see on the shelves of Best Buy and Wal-Mart have their own hard drives...or will I have to play a DVD in my standard player and record what plays on the TV at the same time (like using a VCR)? If the latter is the case, will my recorded copy be of less quality than one burned on a dedicated DVD burner? I do have a pretty high tech receiver with digital decoding and the works, but only a standard TV and not a digital one. Thanks in advance, ViCAP

Okay, whether or not the recorder has a hard drive depends on which one you buy.  Toshiba and Panasonic make burners with built in hard drives.
Second, if you try to copy a factory-recorded DVD of a movie, it won't let you.  There is copy protection on them.