dregenthal
Veteran
When I received my HVX-200 Rush was still working at EVS. Found my P2 cards at LERRO, drove over and picked ‘em up. Now, after reading posts about “the noise” until my eyes bleed, I’m ready to get out there and find out for myself . . .
Oh Sh*t . . . WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!! The picture looks cool but what the f* are those “bugs” flying through every few frames? Ignorance is bliss—I just kept trying different settings (and all the formats) and I just couldn’t get rid of all of ‘em. Maybe if I wait for a r-e-a-l-l-y sunny day I will have enough light to scare them all off . . . wishful thinking. Everything had noise on it, not just the dark places.
Test, test, test, test . . . seems like that’s all I was doing. We don’t need no stinking paid jobs!
Fortunately I had another real issue: Some of the files were showing a red “x” on them and while I could transfer them to the computer, Avid literally puked every time I tried to initialize the program . . . Edius Broadcast could’nt do much with them either. And to think, I had nearly a full head of hair when this all started.
I e-mail Barry, and I e-mailed Rush regarding the red x’s . . . wanting to know if they had heard anything about this. Both agreed there was indeed an issue and suggested I contact Jan. So I sent a note to her, full of blather, which basically explained pretty much nothing. Jan, to her credit and despite my inability to properly describe the problem, IMMEDIATELY hooked my up with one of the engineers. I was asked to perform a couple of simple shots to determine if the issue could be isolated to one of the P2 cards. No soap, that wasn’t it. (I should say that I have spoken with a fair number of users and dealers over the past few weeks and not one of them has reported an issue with a P2 card . . . or a camera for that matter).
Anyhow, the support folks asked me to send my baby up for an evaluation – that was last week. I shipped it out and I know they received it on Monday. I called yesterday and spoke with one of the engineers who calmly told me that my camera was shipping and that I would receive it today . . .
‘bout 2pm the UPS truck pulls up and out hops this smiling guy with the same box I sent off last week (I suspect he may secretly be an indie filmmaker and that he knew what was in the box). Anyhow, for the past 7 or 8 hours I have run the camera through every single test I can think of except maybe water torture . . . Results?
Oh man, am I ever glad I bought this camera!!! I can hardly wait for the sun to come up tomorrow so I can do it all over again.
My wife wondered why out of all the HVX’s that are out there -- must be at least 20 by now, right? – sorry I just couldn’t resist that one . Anyhow, that’s not the point. I know someone will probably say, “well, they were just doing their job – that’s what they’re supposed to do.” Yeah, I’ll go along with that, but only to a point because I have had very different experiences with other manufacturers of big ticket items.
My point is (something like) this: I e-mailed and got a response the very same day. In fact I also got an e-mail from the engineer, and while it was late that day, he both called and (because I wasn’t in) e-mailed me the following morning. I have no less than 6 e-mails and 2 or 3 phone calls from Panasonic. And I have my camera back working properly . . . all inside of a week working time. The speed with which my issue was handled is unparalleled, the level of professionalism was “over the top.”
Most of the time bad news travels fast. Maybe this is an opportunity for good news to share equal footing . . . I could not be more happy with my experience and the service provided by Jan and the engineers. Those bugs/artifacts/noise/whatever that was is completely gone. There are a lot of businesses out there that have become adept at repeating slogans (like, “Service after the Sale”) Jan, Panasonic, and their support team actually deliver what many others can only promise -- I thought maybe some of you might want to know that.
Thanks Jan!
Oh Sh*t . . . WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!! The picture looks cool but what the f* are those “bugs” flying through every few frames? Ignorance is bliss—I just kept trying different settings (and all the formats) and I just couldn’t get rid of all of ‘em. Maybe if I wait for a r-e-a-l-l-y sunny day I will have enough light to scare them all off . . . wishful thinking. Everything had noise on it, not just the dark places.
Test, test, test, test . . . seems like that’s all I was doing. We don’t need no stinking paid jobs!
Fortunately I had another real issue: Some of the files were showing a red “x” on them and while I could transfer them to the computer, Avid literally puked every time I tried to initialize the program . . . Edius Broadcast could’nt do much with them either. And to think, I had nearly a full head of hair when this all started.
I e-mail Barry, and I e-mailed Rush regarding the red x’s . . . wanting to know if they had heard anything about this. Both agreed there was indeed an issue and suggested I contact Jan. So I sent a note to her, full of blather, which basically explained pretty much nothing. Jan, to her credit and despite my inability to properly describe the problem, IMMEDIATELY hooked my up with one of the engineers. I was asked to perform a couple of simple shots to determine if the issue could be isolated to one of the P2 cards. No soap, that wasn’t it. (I should say that I have spoken with a fair number of users and dealers over the past few weeks and not one of them has reported an issue with a P2 card . . . or a camera for that matter).
Anyhow, the support folks asked me to send my baby up for an evaluation – that was last week. I shipped it out and I know they received it on Monday. I called yesterday and spoke with one of the engineers who calmly told me that my camera was shipping and that I would receive it today . . .
‘bout 2pm the UPS truck pulls up and out hops this smiling guy with the same box I sent off last week (I suspect he may secretly be an indie filmmaker and that he knew what was in the box). Anyhow, for the past 7 or 8 hours I have run the camera through every single test I can think of except maybe water torture . . . Results?
Oh man, am I ever glad I bought this camera!!! I can hardly wait for the sun to come up tomorrow so I can do it all over again.
My wife wondered why out of all the HVX’s that are out there -- must be at least 20 by now, right? – sorry I just couldn’t resist that one . Anyhow, that’s not the point. I know someone will probably say, “well, they were just doing their job – that’s what they’re supposed to do.” Yeah, I’ll go along with that, but only to a point because I have had very different experiences with other manufacturers of big ticket items.
My point is (something like) this: I e-mailed and got a response the very same day. In fact I also got an e-mail from the engineer, and while it was late that day, he both called and (because I wasn’t in) e-mailed me the following morning. I have no less than 6 e-mails and 2 or 3 phone calls from Panasonic. And I have my camera back working properly . . . all inside of a week working time. The speed with which my issue was handled is unparalleled, the level of professionalism was “over the top.”
Most of the time bad news travels fast. Maybe this is an opportunity for good news to share equal footing . . . I could not be more happy with my experience and the service provided by Jan and the engineers. Those bugs/artifacts/noise/whatever that was is completely gone. There are a lot of businesses out there that have become adept at repeating slogans (like, “Service after the Sale”) Jan, Panasonic, and their support team actually deliver what many others can only promise -- I thought maybe some of you might want to know that.
Thanks Jan!
