I just had to send my HD200UB to the service center because after a 10 hour critical shoot, while reviewing the footage I realized it recorded only small clean sections here and there(a few seconds long) and, black, squares, half screens, frozen screens, etc. in between.

They say it was heavily contaminated or clogged heads, possibly caused by bad tapes ( I am using SONY premium tapes all the time)

What puzzles me is that the camera didn't warn me at all about the heads being dirty, I always take with me a backup camera just in case, also the camera had 87 hours total.
The JVC guys told me that the camera will only trigger an alarm if the dropout is a certain number of frames long but the droupouts in my camera are a few seconds long.

This cameras have a history log in the service menu and it shows warnings at some point, again the camera didn't show any on the screen whis is very weird, yes, maybe i am focused on the shoot and not paying attention to all the characters in the viewfinder, but normally a dirty head warning is a flashing text in the middle of the screen right?

Thanks,

Manuel



Has anybody had this kind of problem before?

I had the same issue with my HD110u. No warning from the camera and the same results you experienced with my footage. I had to send it to the shop also. They gave the camera a thorough head cleaning. I was told that the sony tapes did it to my camera. The lube on the tapes clogged the heads. I only use JVC tapes now.

I had the same exact thing happen to me with my JVC GY-DV5100. I was using Sony
DVCAM tapes, which apparently JVC cameras don't like. The Sony tapes a wet lubricant and the JVC cameras like dry lubricant. So after several shoots with the Sony tapes, I started getting bad video and no warnings. I sent it to JVC and they cleaned the heads saying they were badly clogged. On my first shoot I had the same problem. I sent it back to JVC and they cleaned them again. A few shoots later I had bad video. I sent it to JVC for a 3rd time and they replaced the heads. Short version of the story is I had to send it back a total of 5 times for the same problem. And now, after a year of it being Ok, it's starting to act up again.

My concern is , why isn't the system giving you an error message when the heads are clogged, pretty scary huh?

Yup, I very rarely get any error message and I then don't find out there was a problem until I get back.

Don't use Sony tapes as much as possible.
If you do a search on this forum you will see many old posts discussing this.
Certainly don't mix brands. And if you have to, clean the heads first.

Thanks for the info Marc, is this tape problem just with some sony tapes, or people who use sony tapes in general will eventually have this problem?

I am still confused because I was using sony tapes on another 200U for a good year with no problems what soever.

Thanks again

Thanks for the info Marc, is this tape problem just with some sony tapes, or people who use sony tapes in general will eventually have this problem?

I am still confused because I was using sony tapes on another 200U for a good year with no problems what soever.

Thanks again
Manual, I have used Sony HDV tapestock exclusively with my 251 for just under 2 years now. I have had a minor dropout recently, but 10 seconds of tape cleaner resolved the issue.
This is only the second time I have used the tape cleaner since buying the camera.
Perhaps I'm lucky?
I'm certainly generaly confused or at least a little befuddled...

It takes awhile for the problem to arise. It took me almost 2 years. By the time I sent it in for service it was just outside the 2 year warranty.

I got my camera last week and the engineer said it wasn't only the clogged heads but also misalignment of the drum, although he doubted the misalignment itself caused the problem, but I remember cleaning the heads 7 times and even though it helped a little, everytime I would rewind or fast forward in the VTR mode, the problem would become worse, that's when I suspected problems with the mechanism.

I will be testing the camera to see how it works but I am quite frustated wiht JVC's way of handling this problem, this camera was dropped during shipping and I was reluctant to accept it on arrival and alerted JVC about it, they said it should work fine and insisted that I should use it and alert them of any problems. Now after it failed they say they don't think it was caused by the mishandling and they can't replace it, I should keep it and if it fails again then they will see how they can help me but they won't replace the camera.

I am very frustrated with JVC, I will think twice before buying from them again.

I got my camera last week and the engineer said it wasn't only the clogged heads but also misalignment of the drum, although he doubted the misalignment itself caused the problem, but I remember cleaning the heads 7 times and even though it helped a little, everytime I would rewind or fast forward in the VTR mode, the problem would become worse, that's when I suspected problems with the mechanism.

I will be testing the camera to see how it works but I am quite frustated wiht JVC's way of handling this problem, this camera was dropped during shipping and I was reluctant to accept it on arrival and alerted JVC about it, they said it should work fine and insisted that I should use it and alert them of any problems. Now after it failed they say they don't think it was caused by the mishandling and they can't replace it, I should keep it and if it fails again then they will see how they can help me but they won't replace the camera.

I am very frustrated with JVC, I will think twice before buying from them again.

While I will report back to the forum in full I will just note that several weeks ago I had what I thought was a tape head clog which manifested itself with horizontal drop outs. The service engineer carefully cleaned the tape path and realigned the heads. The problem appeared to be fixed however out on a shoot it re-manifested itself. I returned the camera to the service company who repeated the procedure and checked the camera again. Again I took it out on a job after testing it myself and again the problem occurred.
I returned it again to the service company who contacted the factory in Japan who recommended that a particular component in the power supply be replaced with a component of a different specification. That has now happened and I received the camera back and tested it last night with a good result. However since the fault appears intermittent I will reserve judgement for another week or so.

I think your problem (from what you describe) is probably a dirty head or misalignment problem however it never hurts to consider other alternatives if your difficulties are not cured.

regards
Ian Skurrie