How many hours do you think the Z1 is good for. How long will the heads last? Just wondering when it will be time to think about getting new ones. We have several with over 500+ hours and still kicking.

My Z1U has 470 hours operation (270 hours drum run and 550 hours threading), has been bought damaged as parts and was rebuilt by my local Sony service company in Norway (the LCD was crushed, the mike disconnected and the handle assy cracked and bent ). But, this is my point...everything inside the cam body was working perfect. After rebuilding the cam and cleaning it everything worked perfectly. Sony HVR-Z1 is built like a tank ! more stories ??

I agree. It was like this in the 4:3 days, where the VX2100 was the toughest domestic camcorder you could buy simply because Sony made the PD170 to go to war and back.

Same with the FX1. The Z1 has to take the hits on the battlefield, so the FX1, using the same chassis, body, lens, tape deck and chip block assembly, does very well out of it.

tom.

The camera bodies may look like plastic, but they are magnesium. Built like tanks.

I am going on three years with mine. Well over two hundred hundred hours of outdoor sub zero work, one snowboarding crash at about 30km/h, untold hours of transport, vibration, and the camera's only problems are the ones it arrived with - totally useless for panning, wandering autofocus. Sweet camera. Built to last.

I've dropped one from about 30 feet while traveling around 20 mph....the handle came loose and the cold shoe broke off. Backed out the screw, unscrewed the handle, remounted it, and it was fine. I've flown them under heli's, rappelled cliffs with them, jumped em' out of aircraft, had them in *nasty* heli wash and paraplane wash, mounted on a saddle/horseback...
you can't quite tell in this image, but it's about 12 degrees, windy, and on the edge of a very cold canyon wind. We've got 5 Z1's set up to capture a high speed shot. This was shot from the open door of a heli via either a V1 or Z1, I'm not sure.

John's original question, however, asks about the lifespan of the heads. Anyone have any hard info on that? It's a question I used to ask when I had a PD150, and I've wondered the same about the Z1.

480 hours on my Z1 and still working perfectly.

This isn't exactly the same thing, but in the manual for my DSR11 deck they say the recommended service interval for the heads is every 1000 hours.

Obviously not an HDV camcorder, but maybe some of the mechanicals/principles are similar.