obtaining the content

Just FYI, in case you, like me, are trying to build a digital system to play videos originally ripped from VHS tapes.  Many of these tapes are recorded with "copy protection", known by the brand name "Macrovision".  This system involves putting out-of-spec signal levels into the vertical blanking interval of the video signal.  Somehow, old-school VHS players -- even if they don't "know about" the copy protection -- are still able to play these tapes, but if you try to copy the signal through the patch cables to another recorder (such as an AV-to-USB converter cable), the irregular sync signals either cause the video to be unusably erratic, or in many cases, the capture software recognizes the Macrovision and refuses to record it (even though it displays it on the screen!).

The solution is to pass the video signal through something which breaks down the signal and re-constitutes it, with freshly-created sync pulses.  I'd have thought this would be the behaviour of any digital capture "cable" anyway, but apparently, no.  Some of the units which are suggested for this are quite expensive, "video stabilizers" and such.  However, turns out, a very cheap "bidirectional NTSC<->PAL converter" does the trick.  These are available for the $20-or-less price range.  You can select either PAL or NTSC for the output, and it accepts either for the input, so you can "convert" NTSC to NTSC, and it removes the Macrovision corruption.  (Also, this will remove any subtitles and other out-of-band data, but at least your video will be usable.)

So, VHS player -> PAL converter -> AV capture cable -> USB on your PC.  Total of (probably) under $50 for both of the gadgets in the middle.

Naturally, use this info only for legal and ethical purposes.  Whether or not copying your own about-to-die VHS tapes into digital files solely for your personal use, qualifies as "fair use", is an interesting debate topic and is ultimately something you'll have to puzzle out for yourself.  Caveat Emptor.  And never forget who the Emptor is!

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(later edit)

I should mention a few other caveats and concerns, WRT obtaining content.  Most important to note, is that the hardware chain I outlined above, never really did work, at least not to any standard of quality that most would find even barely acceptable.  The audio was OK, and that's the part that is most important to my daughter.  However, the video was choppy and intermittent, like it had a bad connection -- or like the Macrovision wasn't being fully suppressed, and was somehow still managing to mess up the sync signals slightly.  But the jumpiness happened even on videos that weren't Macrovision encoded.  Again, this wasn't a show-stopper for my particular use case, but it certainly wouldn't fly for most people, and there's no chance anyone would make any money selling these copies or charging admission to view them.  Maybe there's a way to get better transfer quality with the setup I was using, but my limited specific experience coupled with high overall engineering geekiness, was insufficient to find that way.

Also, and perhaps related, I was capturing the video with MS-Windows.  I tried to use Linux (Debian), but was unable to get the free video drivers to recognize the USB capture device, so I chose to fall back on the included, Windows-only, software which came with the capture cable.

I should also mention, not all my videos came from VHS tapes, I also transferred some material from YouTube.  Of course, if you do this, you should follow all the relevant copyright laws, just as with VHS tapes.  YouTube makes it intentionally not-easy to download videos from their servers, but third-party free software exists which can do the job.  One Linux program which has been able to do the job for several years, was "youtube-dl".  However, it seems that in recent times things have changed (there's a continual arms-race between YouTube and such free software), and youtube-dl under that name no longer works.  However, the developers of youtube-dl have continued maintaining a downloader, under different project names; it seems to be a moving target, but careful Internet searching will get you to the current right answer.  (Internet searching that is *not* careful will get you tons of viruses and click-bait BS, because this is one of those "hot topics" that attracts scammers to prey upon the unwary.  Beware.)