vhs to digital

hi,i just bought an old magnavox easycam at a yard sale.i would like to find out if it is possible to use it as a webcam and to record video and audio to my computers hard drive.i also would like to know what is the easiest and least expensive (if possible)way to convert recordings made with camera to digital and or put them on dvd/upload them.thanks,TJ.

You’d probably need an analog tv tuner card (you can get them as internal PCI/PCI-express or external as USB or a few as firewire)
Here’s some examples
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=video+capture&x=0&y=0
First make sure whatever you get has analog capabilities.
Then be SURE whatever you buy matches whatever output comes out of the camcorder. If you get an RF output, use RF, if you get composite, use composite, etc.
http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/svideo.html
http://hometheater.learnstuffonline.com/pages/101/ht_101_connect2.html

Then I suppose you can use the camcorder as a webcam IF you can select the video capture input as a source for capture (in whatever program you use, smartvid32 or virtualvcr for example)
http://virtualvcr.sourceforge.net/
i’m not sure whether that’s feasible for every card, but it likely depends more on the card than on the camcorder.

Yes, as said above. A video tuner/capture card is the best option for doing this.