Yeah… I just got stuck without my camera and DV tapes I need to watch. I don’t work on DV too much. Decks are way too expensive so not really practical unless you have you are setting up an editing suite. I got my camera back now… the question is academic… but it would still be great to have an answer for future reference.
RE: the Mini DV to VHS thing, i was curious and just googled it- here’s a thread to support you:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208–7594_102–0.html?forumID=59&messageID=1705107&threadID=153279
Anyway, I don’t have a VHS player so I’m not really concerned about that. But to take on that question- Yeah, I think you would need to pass through something- no adapter will handle that. They do make I think a VHS to DV kind of pass through device that hooks up to your computer- though this may be only so that you an encode a VHS signal.
Seriously, I wonder if somewhere in this city there are public Mini Dv decks. Maybe not.