I just checked, my Canon miniDV does Not have video in. As if it wasn't useless enough already. It's by far the worst video camera I have. The digital noise in the image is atrocious, especially in less than broad daylight. That and the digital compression offsets any supposed gain in resolution DV gets you. The colors aren't too accurate, they're a bit muddied with low contrast. The image stabilization is non existant. The auto focus isn't much better, it has everything in the same depth so your eye has trouble knowing whether to focus on the blurry noise filled basketball player or the crowd behind him.
My Sony 8mm from '97 has professional color quality, even I have trouble distinguishing it from 3ccd miniDV. I have a very similarly good Sony Hi8 xr from '98. The most important thing is a clean, clear picture without noise artifacts, with accurate vibrant colors and a good exposure that produces a natural image. Lines of resolution isn't nearly as important as those other aspects.

End of rant. Trust me, you'd be pretty pissed off (even after 2 years) if you spent $700 for a PoS that should have cost half that and really wasn't even worth $200.