haha come on man, i did just give you a magic bullet code. i'm not insulting your recent decision to buy a 35mm adapter for your hvx, that's a whole different story. you said yourself that you were at one point considering switching to a dslr, you must have at least liked something about the image they produced.
i missed the part about the $150, but i still don't think it would be worth it. a static adapter looks like shit, and that's basically all he would be able to buy.
also, yea i would say that a DSLR looks better than a canon vixia, even if it does have a 35mm adapter. an hvx with a nice adapter gives off a very professional, filmic image with shallow depth of field, whereas a cheap adapter on a consumer camcorder will look like a hipster polaroid half the time.
i don't see what's wrong with telling him to save up money for a far nicer camera than he has now rather than investing in a camera that he'll want to get rid of in a year anyways. regardless of whether it's a dslr, a traditional prosumer camera such as the hpx, or one of those hybrid things.