yes you can use a video card with a video input (also known as a video capture card). or meron din mga TV tuner cards with cable input and also video input card. i'm using an inno3d Nvidia MX 440 with 64mb. it came with bundled capture software, ung WinDVD creator. okay na sa akin ang results. however if you would prefer high end video capture cards, meron yung mga Pinnacle products (meron firewire connectivity) saka iba pa.
you connect the audio out of your VHS/Betamax to the line inputs of your sound card (you will need a mono to stereo adapter, if you vcr is a mono output model) and the video out of the vcr connects to the video in of the
video card (S video connection is recommended)
then you launch the software.... view the preview and press record....
usually me setting na VCD, PCmpeg etc...
a processor of at least 1gigahertz and lots of harddisk space and also about 512megabytes of ram. also your harddisk should be defragged and at least using microsoft NTFS file system for the harddrive...