You needed a high end Targa 2000 or was it 3000 that did uncompressed, but for VHS tapes thats a bit overkill anyway. Targa 2000's used to be pretty cheap, but those deals seem to be long gone (glad I grabbed them while they were cheap). The video loop back cable was needed for the PC to merge the capture picture into the main screen, for the mac you just ran a second monitor (unless you are talking about the video I/O dongle).

TV tuners for computers have generally been crap no matter what age they were.