Are these commercial tapes or something that was recorded? Most commercial tapes include some very nasty copy protection. You would need a device to remove that, in addition to a player. If they aren't commercial, you just need to get your hands on a player.

Tape quality, at its very best, sucked by modern standards. Some of the bad reviews may reflect the quality of the medium and not problems with the equipment. They may also be the result of people attempting to copy commercial tapes without removing the copy protection. I'm sure there is some junk out there, but most things designed to play tapes play the adequately.

Be aware the it may take some work to find a monitor that is compatible with your player. Video cables have changed dramatically since then. You will almost certainly need an additional device to convert the signal from the player into something you can connect to a monitor.

If you overcome all of that, and still want to convert them, you will need a video input device and some software for your computer. At least that shouldn't be too hard to find or too expensive.

I wish you luck. And feel free to ask me if you have questions. I'll help if I can. It's been twenty years since I dealt with this stuff, but most of the technology your talking about is around that old too.