No my friend, Im sorry to say that thats not a bad price to repair one of these camcorders, because of all the differant testing jigs, cables and equipment needed to do such repairs.  We are a throw away society.  The problem you have is a bad dew sensor mounted on the main mechanical chassis, or a componet, most likey a surface mounted capacitor in the servo circuit.  To repair these, they need to be disassembled, diagnoised, repaired, and then reassembles and alighned.  This could be easaly a two and a half hour to 3 hour repair.   You may want to try one of these repair places as they give free estimates  http://www.videoonerepair.com/  Or  http://www.videotech.com/
http://www.camcorderrepair.com/    Sorry for the bad news.  Good Luck and if you do get it fixed let us know what you did or if you got the camcorder repaired.

"Those who do not know their opponent's arguments, do not completely understand their own".

**For complete TV repair kits including parts goto www.TvRepairKits.com

i guess you have nothing to lose. i have in the past resoldered these sensors but most of the time they come back, as when you resolder, the value of the sendor changes. Now for those who it worked for GREAT!

"Those who do not know their opponent's arguments, do not completely understand their own".

**For complete TV repair kits including parts goto www.TvRepairKits.com