Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. I believe it's intentional on the part of Canon, to get the most latitude and adjustability out of the HV20 footage. Apples to oranges, but it's what the Red camera and many other pro cameras do to give us the most to work with in post. I have a preset in Vegas that applies a slight s-curve, slight sharpening and slight bump in saturation to give it a more punchy look. Works well.

That being said, I love the look of the HV20 cine mode as-is. It's very filmic.

For these scenes, it definitely provided a much nicer contrast curve than the standard P mode. I did some A/B comparison shots and found the non-Cine shots to be a bit on the dull side. I may have been able to achieve the same result by playing with gamma curves, but if there enough light, the Cine mode does do a nice job.

I would be very appreciative on any suggestions for getting a bit more "punch" out of the final results, my basic workflow is:
HV20->Cineform Intermediate (particularly if I'm working in 24p, use HDLink for 3:2 pulldown)->Vegas 7->Output from Vegas as HDV 720p->Transcode to h.264 using MPEG Streamclip at 1280x720p30 5 Mbit max for upload to Vimeo. About the only filters I've been using are some minimal sharpening. The HV20 is set to its default settings as far as sharpness, saturation, etc.

Which Camera do you prefer the HV20 or the HF10?

For absolute picture quality in the raw capture, the HV20, but I really like the 30p mode on the HF10. Since all my video is destined for 1280x720p30, a lot of minor differences between the two disappear in the downscale. The main downside to the HF10 is the time it takes to transcode from the AVCHD format to Cineform intermediate, which is what I use for all my editing. Its a lot longer than just doing the raw HDV capture from the HV20 tape.