I have recently bought a Lite-On HD-A740GX DVD Recorder. I want to backup/copy my old purchased videos to DVD (linking my vcr) and also copy some of my purchased DVD's.

The problem is I keep getting a fail message saying unable to do this as the DVD is copyright protected.

How do I overcome this?

One way to copy your DVDs is RipIt4Me (Freeware).
You can read about it and download it here:
http://www.ripit4me.org/index.html

LoL !

Did you even read his post ? He purchased a DVD RECORDER (standalone) and wants to hook his VCR to it and convert his old VHS movies to DVD - The dvd recorder is reporting that the material is copyrighted.

A DVD recorder will give this message when it detects a macrovision signal - Problem is that some very old VHS tape in very bad conditions and crappy VCRs can be mistaken for copyprotected tapes.

There are different ways for you to solve this problem

A. Use a full window TimeBaseCorrector that will fully regenerate video sync.

or
option B which is the least expensive, get one of those boxes that strips the macrovision signal from your VHS signal (although I don't know how efficient this box is as I've never used it myself but have heard it does work!)

Welcome caroline63,

using the words vhs dvd in our search http://club.cdfreaks.com/search.php? function will give you many results and help. Also the methods greg42 mentioned are listed there.