I've been using my HV-10 video camera to record analog SD TV broadcasts passed through my VCR's composite-out onto mini-DV tape. I was pleased with the results overall. The experience, especially given signal noise, was better than when I used to convert tapes to DVD with a Pinnacle MovieBox DV, a device that was notorious for locking up when it encountered really noisy signals. Personally, I find mini-DV cassette to be more durable and flexible medium than optical discs.

I wonder if I am alone in wanting an evolution of the VCR that forks away from DVD entirely and instead uses mini-DV cassette for recording off cable?

MiniDV has excellent quality, but it's nowhere near as convenient as DVDs are (IMHO). And for archival purposes I'd be quite concerned about the long-term viability of the format. Tape is likely going to dissappear as a option in new camcorders within the next few (3-5) years as hard drives and solid state storage costs continue to drop. After that you run the risk of loosing your recordings if your unit fails and you're unable to find a replacement.

And, when the time comes to migrate your recordings to a new media format, you'll have to do it in real time. Folks migrating from DVD to newer storage formats (media servers, HD media, etc.) can do so using high speed copies since MPEG has become entrenched as a long-term standard.

Fair point. But I hope tape will remain much longer than 3-5 years. I find DVD and hard drive based cameras more inconvenient as they are now. Of course, as a photographer, I tend to carry a handful of SD cards and a CompactFlash wherever I go, so solid state storage has some nice advantages.