A HDD camcorder from a manufacturer like JVC should give quality AT LEAST equivalent to MiniDV casseette standard if not better.
There are a few 'in camera' possibilities and some 'outside of camera' possibilities
Did you shoot in poor light, have a filter applied, (night mode, low light etc), Anti shake turned on, these will degrade an image immediately, in short, was there good enough light to enable a smooth framerate and settings as 'standard' on your camera as they should be by default?
Out of camera, did you download and view the RAW camera file or did you take it off camera with a piece of software which may have 'helpfully' automaticaly compressed it to be Facebook or youtube friendly? (i.e. ruined it)
If the light was good, settings standard and you're viewing the RAW file the quality won't be HD tv but should be plenty clear and decent enough to watch on a 38" tv clearly.
Like stills cameras, people get hung up on the MP count and quality, HD etc, rather than the very important part of the optics, good names like JVC will have good optics.
To give an idea of the results you can get heres a link to a video of mine taken on an old JVC Mini DV camcorder, (I use this one for reviews and onboard as it's the only one I have with an external mic socket) and it's a great little camcorder.
Bear in mind this video was captured and digitised to the pc via software THEN, compressed to suit the guidelines required by youtube at the time so the qaulity you see here is about a quarter of the quality of the out of camera to tv original file.