My $50 unit does work on NTSC protected VHS. The results are flawless. In fact, I connected my DVD player to my VCR with this unit for fun, and found that I was able to make a VHS copy directly off of the macrovision-encoded DVD.
So I'm pretty sure that that $100 thing will work, but it's unneccessary as the cheaper version actually does the same job. I am very happy with it.
Copymaster