Well, if you have big shoulders and don't mind carrying around tons of extra weight and doing some extra research, you can do things as I have. You can get old analog 3CDD 1/2" chip ENG cameras on ebay for cheap these days. I got a Sony EVW-300 for $450 (tape doesn't work, but don't need it) and then I bought a DV camera that supported analog input (Canon Elura 65) and just recorded directly from the Camera's BNC and S-Video outputs to MiniDV, giving me the quality (if that's what you call 4:1:1 *sigh*) and cheapness of minidv with the sweet image quality of 3 1/2" CCDs. Another benefit of using ENG cameras is that you can get TRUE manual control of everything. I can't live without true manual focus (not that faux manual focus ring on the GL cameras and others like it), I also got zoom and macro with all that. I also bought a battery pack for the ENG camera that cost me $65.
All told I paid $650 for my setup which will get me the (almost) same image quality of a $20,000 DVCAM setup. The catch being all the wires I have to wrangle, the extra weight, and the risks of buying off ebay. Seriously, I love it.
EDIT: Oh, and the EVW-300 and most every ENG camera out there will have XLR inputs with at least one providing phantom power.