At that price I'd suggest a lightly used Canon HV30. Good to great pic quality and manual control.
Yeah, the canon is a great little camera. HDV is also good compression compared to AVCHD (most cameras). The only downside (at least for me) is that you need to play back the tapes to import the footage on your computer.
I bought the Canon 600D (or rebel t3i). It has an input for microhpones and I think (but I never actually tested it) it performs better in low-light then camcorders because of the lenses you can use and the bigger sensor.
Also, doing interviews with the cheap portrait lens gives great bokeh.
The only (big) downside to it, is that it's not designed to do video. So you can't really hold it nice (without rig) like a normal camcorder, it won't focus normal (it can autofocus, but it does this in an extreme distracting way) and settings are less easy then on a camcorder.
But when you (like me) make short films, most scenes are set-up and you have the time to do all the settings, focusing etc.
There are also other DSLR camer's that do video. The rebel t3i has a screen you can flip though.