I Will NEVER Buy Another JVC Camera!
August 15th, 2005Two years ago, my girls bought me a JVC MiniDV camcorder for Father’s Day. I picked it out, but it was their gift.
It’s a nice camera. It’s small, lightweight, takes great video, or at least as good as I need. It has an IEEE1394 (FireWire) connector, so I can connect the camera to my computer and transfer tapes digitally onto my hard disk.
My favorite feature is its Audio/Visual input. You can run standard stereo audio signals and a digital video signal into its A/V input jack and record them digitally onto MiniDV tapes. The quality is excellent; everything I play back looks as good as the original. I used the camcorder last year to record all the televised Auburn football games onto digital tape.
The A/V input signal can be passed through directly to FireWire. I can use the camera to transfer from the A/V input directly to hard disk without having to record onto a MiniDV tape. The best part about the A/V input is that it ignores the Macrovision protection used to prevent people from copying their VHS tapes, so I’ve been using the camcorder to transfer some of our VHS tapes onto DVD.
Come to think of it, I’ve used the camera to record more A/V input than I have used it to shoot through-the-lens video.
Lately, though, I’ve developed a hatred for my JVC camera. It has a moisture sensor inside the tape-handling part of the camera, and this moisture sensor has been giving false readings. When this happens, the camera will not function. A message reading “CONDENSATION - OPERATION PAUSED - PLEASE WAIT” blinks on the LCD screen in large, unfriendly letters, and the camera will not operate, except to eject its tape.
The first time this happened was back in late December. The camera had been on the shelf since I recorded the SEC championship game almost a month earlier. I got it out to set up for recording the Sugar Bowl, and that’s the first time I saw this condensation warning. I’m sure that there was no condensation inside the camera. It had been in a warm, dry environment, and had undergone no rapid temperature changes of the sort that cause condensation to form.
I checked the manual, which said to turn the camera off for a few minutes to “clear the warning” then turn the camera back on. I did that. Repeatedly. Iteratively. Over and over again. Until I was sick of seeing “CONDENSATION” blinking at me in large, unfriendly letters. I called JVC’s service line, but they told me to do the same thing, then suggested that I bring the camera in for service. It’s out of warranty, so there’s no telling what that was going to cost me.
The next thing I did was to check the Internet to see if anyone else out there had overcome the problem. Many people had seen the problem, and not just with my model of JVC camcorder, but with many models of JVC camcorder, including old VHS and 8mm models. Seems this problem has a long history at JVC. The one person who seemed to have solved the CONDENSATION problem described taking apart his camera, and disconnecting a jumper that he said would “reboot” the firmware. Whatever.
But I was desperate, so I took my camera apart. I got out pieces of paper, and drew outlines of the camera from various perspectives. Every time I took out one of those tiny, tiny screws, I’d tape it to the diagram in a position to indicate what part of the camera the screw belonged to. I must have removed a couple of dozen screws before I got the camera to come apart far enough that I could begin disconnecting jumpers. When I figured I’d probably disconnected the jumper that was supposed to “reboot” the firmware, I reassembled the camera.
It worked.
This isn’t the first thing that I’ve fixed by taking it apart and putting it back together again, and it probably won’t be the last. When I put the camera back together, I realized that I’d removed about twice as many screws as I needed to. So, as I reassembled it, I used a green Sharpie to mark each of the important screws for future reference.
While we were staying with the Richardsons on Lake Wilson a couple of weeks ago, the camera had a CONDENSATION conniption again. I recorded a total of maybe two minutes of the girls swimming and jumping off the dock before the camera got into its snit. I fiddled with it a little bit, but eventually gave up and packed it away. I got the camera back out this afternoon, powered it up and the CONDENSATION warning was still there, still blinking in large, unfriendly, stubborn letters on the LCD.
This time I decided to try some more research before I took the camera apart again. With Google’s help, I revisited some of the other things people had tried. Some people had success with leaving the camera opened up in a warm room. I had tried that at the Richardson’s. No luck. One guy fixed his problem by blowing out the camcorder’s innards with compressed air. Didn’t work for me. Another guy suggested using a hair drier to air out the tape-handling mechanisms. I used Wendy’s drier, on its no-heat setting, for about ten minutes. No joy.
Finally, I found a report that gave me hope. This guy had figured out where the moisture sensor was. He said that by cleaning it with a moistened Q-tip, then drying it with a dry one, he could cure his camera’s CONDENSATION problem, at least for a couple of months. I located the sensor he described, and cleaned it as best I could. Instead of water, though, I used isopropyl alcohol which is what tape-deck makers used to recommend for cleaning tape heads and other things inside of cassette decks. It was difficult to reach the sensor with a Q-tip, because of the geometry of the insides of the camera. Maybe I wasn’t able to clean it will enough, or maybe that method just doesn’t work for everybody. I appeared to get some black gunk off the sensor, but the camera still wouldn’t work.
So it was time to take the camera apart again, although by this point I was ready to take it into the back yard to see what effect my framing nailer would have on its attitude. Probably it would just continue to blink CONDENSATION in large, unfriendly letters, up until the moment it flew into a million bits. Instead of using high-velocity ring-shank galvanized nails, though, I used my littlest screwdriver. I patiently took out all the screws marked in green, disconnected the jumpers, reassembled the camera, and now it works like new.
It’s ridiculous that I should have to go to such outrageous lengths just to overcome one faulty sensor. It’s ridiculous that JVC can’t provide me any kind of help in correcting the problem. It’s ridiculous that a two-year-old camera isn’t more reliable than this.
I will never ever buy another JVC camcorder. I don’t care if they’re two for a dollar. JVC has made a sucker out of me, and I won’t give them a second chance. My next camera may be a Sony. It may be a Samsung. It may be some other brand. But I can guarantee you this: it will not be a JVC!
August 16th, 2005 at 9:54 am
Jim,
I see this problem with my Sony TRV10 MiniDV on, well, hot, humid days. Typically, it has to be >95 degrees and near 100% humidity, but it happens. Fourth of July parades are usually the victim. The problem clears up rapidly when removing the camera from the humid conditions, so I haven’t had to go through the pain you went through.
On another item, a Sony DVD player (a 2nd generation player that cost about $225 in the day), I had a problem where it would not read DVDs very well, especially after hitting the second layer in a movie. Eventually, it got so bad that the player wouldn’t read any disks. Do you know what you do with a DVD player that won’t read disks? You use it as a door stop, but it doesn’t do a very good job because they’re so light, they don’t really hold the door.
I researched on the internet and found out that the 350 and 550 models had the same problem because they shared the same motherboard. The problem turned out to be a diode that would go bad. The solution was to take it out and short the open connection. It worked for many people, but for some, including me, this did not work. I guess I should have been taking better notes back when I would watch you solder back in the work shed. Soldering surface mount components is tedious, delicate work, even when just trying to short two connections.
Ironically, we bought a JVC and that has worked out great.
later,
Jerry
August 16th, 2005 at 10:26 am
I wouldn’t mind quite so much if my camera would clear up on its own, but once it’s in that state, it stays that way until I disassemble the thing and disconnect that jumper. I’m sure there’s probably an easier way, some combination of buttons that will cause the camera to reset itself, but JVC can’t or won’t tell me what that is.
As for solder surface-mount devices, I’ve never tried it and probably never would, unless I was desperate!
August 26th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
After being a great camera for about 2.5 years, we’ve been having much the same problem with the condensation message and tape “sticking”. After doing some research on the internet, we have found out that we are not alone and that we really have an expensive pile of electronic junk. Wish we had known about the JVC issues before. We talked with the big box electronics store where bought it and they want too much to even look at it let alone what it may need for a fix. That money could just as well go to a new camera. Based on what your posting said, we have some experience with small electronics and “tinkering”, so we’ll try dismantling the P.O.S. and unplugging the cables to get a reset. Maybe we’ll then have a camera we can use for crash test dummies or something. Thanks.
August 26th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Before you resort to taking the camera apart, you might want to try cleaning the moisture sensor. See this page: http://www.edbydesign.com/books/B0000899QP.html and look at the comment dated 2005-05-18. The description he gives of the location of the sensor is hard to follow. Lay the camera on its side, with the tape door upward, the bottom of the camera facing you, the lens facing to your right, the viewfinder facing to your left. Open the tape-bay door. With the camera in this orientation, look at the far back, far left part of the tape bay; there you will see a little silver and amber can-shaped thingy perhaps half an inch tall and between a quarter and three-eights of an inch in diameter. The moisture sensor is a little black square mounted on that thingy, facing to the right - in the same direction as the lens. It’s very hard to see, much less to get a Q-tip on. But if you can find it and clean it, it’s a less drastic solution than disassembling your camera.
Good luck, and let me know how it turns out.