Hi everyone, Is my hd1 defective or a new bug?

[John Carlson]

Hi,

I got my hd1 two days ago after being impressed by Carlos,Joseph and Bo's videos.

While playing around with it i notice that in very low light(with one 60w table lamp on in the hall) while have it set to iso 400(aka 1600) my camera and the resulted videos develope purple noise unlike the ones seen in bo's restaurant pan which are black.

Now the thing I find odd is the purple noise while mostly random, some tend to concentrate in specific area of the lcd forming vertical lines! This is especially visible uni color walls. And it appears on the same area everytime I conduct the test.

Secondly, in the same lighting situation, if i get too close to a wall or zoom in, my lcd shows a split screen where there is a line deviding the movie into 50/50 segment!

I am thinking of returning it but the problem is this would take time and I will be going on a holiday soon. I wonder if somemone would be kind enough to confirm that this infact isnt a defect but a design fault? It doesnt happen in normal lighting conditions. These faults are most obvious during tv shq mode. everything auto and iso 400

Thanks and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[John Carlson]

Update:

I was reading the other threads and realize that the split screen is indeed a defect. However, mine is barely visible and its only during extreme conditions and during sequantial shots in low lights at iso 400. Can someone please try this for me and let me know the results?

What really bothers me is the vertical purple lines mention above. and I was wondering if someone could also try this and post some results and see if they are similar.

I could post some examples to better illustriate it but I am not sure where to host them. Where do some of you guys upload your videos?

I am getting pretty worried and I am not sure if its worth risking the exchange since my trip is around 11 days away.

[John Carlson]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

..........

Sorry, for jumping to conclusion. this problem I am having is kinda stressing me out :( .

It was meant as a gift to my girlfriend and I wanted to make sure everything is perfect before handing it over so she would be perfectly happy and do not have to deal with warranty issues... sigh.

[Wayne Morellini]

You really need people with the camera to confirm, but for some reason they are not replying, maybe there is a new thread they are all hanging out on.

[John Carlson]

Hi again,

Ok, I finally uploaded the file here

http://files.filefront.com/SANY0003M.../fileinfo.html

I hope the link works and its a pretty small file

Details about the file: The shot is taken with everything set to auto, NR turned off and iso set to 400(which is 1600 for video). It is shot in tv shq which is 640 x 480 highest quality mode.

The room is about 3 x 5 meters and the only source of light was a single ceiling room light which is a frosted 60w bulb

In this video, both the split screen and purple lines are visible. the split screen is more obvious as I move closer to the wall and it devides the screen 50/50.

There isnt any source of bright lights or direct light since the bulb is covered and its behind me.

Let me know what you see and thanks

[Bo Lorentzen]

Good Morning John,

Downloading right now.

The way you describe the split screen, I "peronally" feel that its a pretty normal HD1 you got in your hand. But the purple seems new. (smile) Regardless, by default, the HD1 do not perform well at 400iso and personally I limit the gain to 200iso feeling that its better to shoot a bit dark rather than having a snowstorm. :-)

.... Still downloading - comming down through a Sony Edge card, so one gotta have a bit of patience.

done.....

OK I see the "purple streaks og bars" - for being at iso 400 on a solid background, thats about what you can expect with the camera, stop shooting solid walls and set your camera to iso 200 instead. (smile)


Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV

[John Carlson]

Hi Bo,

Thanks for the reply :) . Unfortunately, even at 200iso the purple streaks can be slightly visible(particularly the one in the middle towards the right). I am very curious on why your videos does not show them, even with the 400iso pan.

Even Josephss lowlight videos (the one with the cats) doesnt seem to show it

Because it appears on uni color objects, it will be visible everytime the camera hits a table, wall, box and even posters... Can get pretty annoying :( Does your camera show the same purple line and split screen? Perhaps if this is a common issue to expect, I might not have to return it and maybe hope that the hd2 will be better.

Thanks and your insights are very much appreciated, have a great day!

[Bo Lorentzen]

John,

If the purple streaking is evident at 200iso, then I would think about trying a different unit. ;-) after all you do want to be ablet to shoot in somewhat low light without bothersome streaks.

One thing though, this camera do not stand up to close expection very well, and is much better off being just used. (smile) shots agains solid surfaces just do not fly well at all. most of the clips which looks good are with moving backgrounds with "stuff" in them. ;-)

Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV

[Wayne Morellini]

From other post: I see what you mean, I thought you meant the lines where turning up in the same part of the room, this does sound unusual. Maybe you could try calling Sanyo service line about what they think.

I heard stories about Sony selling truck loads of the Sony 1000VX when it was released, because it was new and cheap. Sanyo could have done the same thing with these if they were good enough and didn't have the problems. Stations could give all their camera and reporting staff one to carry around and film anything interesting that unexpectedly happens, that they are not setup to shoot with their regular cameras. But the problem is that there will be better h264 competition soon.

OK, I see it, this looks like the stuff over at the camcorderinfo review samples. Looks like some variation of charge on the pixel columns, the lines have some even spacing. The gain is probably pushing pixels closer to the edge of the threshold, or causing leakage in the columns from the circuits on the bottom etc, producing the line problem. I don't know what the actual definite problem is. The colored pixel noise problem is probably the debayering response to the gain noise I said before.

Your footage seems to be in quiet low light compared to the cats footage. Try setting the white balance manually, I notice that it is trying to make the reflected light on the wall blue, this might lower gain on the blue channel.

This camera has bad low light performance, and this is just more low performance. Maybe it shouldn't be there, or maybe it could be made better at the service centre, but maybe it is just cheap.

Can other people try to replicate the purple lines for John.

[John Carlson]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

Can other people try to replicate the purple lines for John.

Yeah, if only someone would, that would be most excellent!

I am currently on negotiations for an exchange. However, the ebay shop I bought from requires me to confirm the defect with the local sanyo. Problem is will Sanyo Australia be of any use since they don't even carry the product in the local market.

The 7 days no hassle exchange seems to be coming more of a hassle :(.

[Wayne Morellini]

The ebay shop probably knows that, I didn't realise you were local, which part of the country?

Warning:
In the computer market, there is a market were batches of units that have a higher than normal failure rate, or are sub standard, are sold cheap. Unfortunately they get resold into the retail channel as standard quality components.

How companies manage standards is make the manufacturing process, test samples and label it as, say, 5 in 1000 defective. They don't necessarily test them all thoroughly, but factor in the cost of the defective ones returned. A batch that is 50 in 1000 defective might simply get sold at a much cheaper price.

I don't know if Sanyo does this, but be careful with dubious retailers.


Advice:
If the ebay store that you got this from is local, they might well know that there is no local HD1's. Ask Sanyo Australia immediately anyway, if there is no help, try Sanyo Global, describing the situation, that clip is good to link to as well, so they can see how bad it is (and it is very poor). If they won't help you give them model and serial numbers, and ask them which market/country that the camera aims to and contact Sanyo in that market.

[John Carlson]

Hi, I've contacted sanyo australia and they would only inspect the camera if I could provide the warranty card

This is the place I got it from

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....tem=7623606733

Seems pretty reputable and safe... The thing is there isnt a warranty card and I am not sure what to do next. I've even provided them the link to this thread and I am still waiting for a reply. The online live support never works and I've left many "tickets" with my email address for aftersale support and have yet to get a reply. The only way I can contact them and get a reply is when I reply from the presale ebay address they use to correspond with me previously.

I will send sanyo japan an email soon.

[Wayne Morellini]

re-edit, just looked at that page, no wonder you bought it, $799AU, is a bargain compared to what cameras usually go for over here compared to the American price. So it definitely is not an Australian distributor, so most of the Aus stuff below is irrelevant.


Contact them straight away, talk to them on the phone if possible as well, explain that Sanyo will not verify "the fault" because there is no warranty card, ask them for a date from when you first contacted them, for return application, in case the 7 days runs down. Ask them what you should do, and that given the circumstances the only real option is to receive the camera back. See about getting a warranty card.

Contacting Japan is good, but at this stage, try contacting everybody simultaneously to save time, you don't want it to take weeks. I guess you re saying it was the Japanese market model, if it was destined for another market, contacting them is good too (this all requires work on anybodies part but the people that sold this to you in cases like this. Look at the system information and compliance plates to see if the country is mentioned, googling the model number might reveal which countries it is sold in, and you can verify by contacting Sanyo in that country/market.

You can give Sanyo Australia a link to the video you put on line, so they can verify where ever this is acceptable or a fault, they don't have to look at the camera directly they should have sufficient experience to verify it. You can explain that it didn't ship with a card and where it is from. If you are talking to somebody that answers the phone ask to speak to someone further up in management, and keep moving up until you get somebody in charge of the lot that can look at the video and give a finale answer.

If there is a 7 day money back return, what is the problem with returning it, unless they stipulate that it has to be defective?

If they are in Australia, check with consumer affairs to see if there is still a 30 day warranty that applies (not that they would want to listen to that).

[Graham Jones]

The lack of warranty card is the great giveaway.

I bought a HD1 on eBay but it came with a warranty card, and my local Sanyo have given me a 12 month guarantee.

If you can stop the money somehow, I would do it without further hesitation, i.e. if you can use your CC or Paypal to dispute this.

Return the item and start again.

Bear in mind, other things may go wrong with your cam - people with gray units are reporting that the whole cam locks up and shows only black..

'Bite the bullet', 'grasp the nettle' and quickly extricate yourself from this.

[John Carlson]

Hi

Yeah I should probably do what you guys suggested. The only thing I cant do is stop the payment because the money was already diposited to their local bank previously.

Thanks for the advice.

Graham, since you have the camera and imply that I should take action, are you implying that this camera is indeed defective and your unit show no such problems? perhaps getting more users to confirm this would make it easier to proof that they indeed do need to take it back. Especially the fact that I've included the link to here in the email. The least they could do is have a look.

Thanks and I hope this will be over soon. Its things like this that prevents us from enjoying newly acquired toys. This sucks since we are going on a 1 month holiday end of next week. Not only I can't use the camera, I won't even be around to handle the matter.