Graham,

Depending upon your receiver's inputs, I know how you can cut down on the number of inputs to your monitor. This method WILL NOT increase your video quality. For about $20 you can purhcase a small "dongle" that will allow a composite signal to be sent over an S-Video cable. I purchased mine at Keene Electronics, but you can find some other vendors by searching through previous threads on this forum.

I connect the composite video output from my VCR with an RCA cable to one side of the dongle, and an S-Video cable from the other side into one of the S-Video inputs on my receiver. Now I only have "two" types of output from the receiver to the TV -- component and "S-Vid," which includes the composite signal from the VCR. Hope this helps!

-Bruce