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If the tapes are really degraded, state of the art is to digitize them once and do that run as good as possible.

Stuck tapes sometimes are stuck because of moisture. In that case, the tapes are "baked" at a certain temperature to get the moisture out. If the tapes are in really bad condition, you get only one chance to capture what's on them, but the flip side is that one run can be of pretty high quality.

Edit: if your tapes are DV or Digital-8, get a camera with firewire out.

If your tapes are Hi8 analog, get a digital-8 camera which can play analog tapes with firewire out. You won't get a better quality without going the VHS-Decode way.

If none of that is an option, get a decent composite to HDMI converter, than capture the HDMI from that into a PC with a HDMI ripper.

Or one of those "HDMI to SD card" rippers floating around.