A bit of bad news for early adopters of P2

Douglas Villalba

Douglas Villalba

Well-known member
I had my first 4G P2 go bad. I hardly ever actually recorded to it. I mostly used the FS-100 , but I always kept it in the camera.

I sent it to Panasonic and they don't repair them so there went the saving on tape stock.

I thought that they had longer warranty since it was a new technology. I was wrong and now I am thinking of maybe getting another FS-100 as backup or risk buying another P2.

What would you do?
 
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buy another P2 card.

over all they are more reliable than a HDD. I wonder why your card bit it?
 
That sucks Douglas and isnt something I like to hear. If it were me though, I'd stick with p2. While I know you've obviously had a bad experience, look at the numbers of p2 failures vs tape failures vs hard drive failures. Of course actual numbers may be hard to find but when people have something to complain about they generally do. The only complaints I've heard about p2 is the cost.

I'd stick with solid state. Now if they made a solid state firestore that worked as well as p2 works I'd be all over it for long events and such. Nothing is going to completely fool proof. To me though p2 is surprisingly close.

Out of curiousity how did you find out it was bad? Did it fail to record or did you record something and were unable to read it back? I'd hope it would just fail to record and let you know. If and when it did fail it would be nice to not lose footage at least...
 
there was probably something wrong from the start. Perhaps..... Did you try reformatting in a PC?
 
No, I always had it in the slot. I would have it set up to record to both P2 & FS-100. Once I transfer the FS-100 clips to the computer then I would format in camera.

One day when I turned the camera on it started giving a message "Unknown devise" or something to that effect.
 
I'd just like to chime in that this is the first i've ever heard of a p2 card going caput. It must be VERY rare.

I've never had a single issue with a p2 card. I've had tapes break on me during important shoots and that was a nightmare trying to splice it back together.
 
So far no one has reported any P2 going bad, but I was one of the first to buy a P2 camera.

Panasonic should have send me one for free just because of that. :happy:
 
douglas you were one of the first people to buy a P2 cam, so how old is the cam/card exactly?
I am sure I used it less than 20 times (less than 80 GBs)
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could it be the prolonged neglect to the trusty P2 resulted in its ultimate demise???;)
 
I don't get what you mean by "died".

Like it wouldn't work w/ your camera and wouldn't read when you would try to upload something? Not sure if you were doing all of the offloading yourself, but I have seen P2s damaged by someone pressing it in too hard into a power book and clashing the i/o so it wouldn't fully work anymore.

Like any other piece of technology, if it is exposed to high amounts of heat you could be in trouble too.
 
shivrajs said:
douglas you were one of the first people to buy a P2 cam, so how old is the cam/card exactly?

could it be the prolonged neglect to the trusty P2 resulted in its ultimate demise???;)
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Panasonic sells it like it is indestructible, so not using it as mush wasn't the problem.

It just stopped working.
 
ive seen one do that. But Panasonic replaced it no questions... it was past warranty.
 
Can't be very common. Google search "bad P2 card" and you get a grand total of 6 .

Just for comparison - "bad hard drive " = 79,000 pages.
 
Douglas Villalba said:
Not in my case.

I use the FS-100 almost daily and look what died on me.

I am sure I used it less than 20 times (less than 80 GBs)
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Douglas Villalba said:
No, I always had it in the slot. I would have it set up to record to both P2 & FS-100. Once I transfer the FS-100 clips to the computer then I would format in camera.

One day when I turned the camera on it started giving a message "Unknown devise" or something to that effect.
Click to expand...

So if it was recording to both the FS-100 and the P2-card that would lead me to believe you had more than 20 uses. If you are using the FS-100 daily and the card as well along with it, and being a early adaptor, I would say you got a lot of use out of the card. Even though you would normally use the files from the FS-100 you still had the footage on the card, it was still being used. Maybe I miss read the post if so I apologize ahead of time and agree a failure at anytime is no fun. Especially being a early adaptor, like me you dropped a nice piece of change on 4gb of space.
 
mainstreetprod said:
Can't be very common. Google search "bad P2 card" and you get a grand total of 6 .

Just for comparison - "bad hard drive " = 79,000 pages.
Click to expand...

I'd say that there's a heck of a lot more hard drives out there and they've been out there for a lot longer time. Not an apple-to-apple comparison.

Nothing is immune to failure. That's life.
 
Well that scares the crap out of me. I've always had full faith in the cards since I personally have put them through hell and they've always been fine. Honestly, this is the first time I've heard of one going bad. I hope nothing like this happens as I continue with my film.
 
Could the reason of it going bad is because it was left in the camera and never taken out? Probably after repeated times of turn on/off camera while p2 was still in there caused some circut to go out? Just throwing that out there as a possibility, anyone else think this could have something to do with the problem?
 
Or the Universe conspiring against you. Stuff fails.

The "not used much" argument is also flawed, since the card was powered up for many hours, probably hundreds.

If you bought a Ford Model T in 1908 and put it in your garage, would you expect Ford Motor Company to perform warranty service on it today because the engine has seized?
 
THoff said:
Or the Universe conspiring against you. Stuff fails.

The "not used much" argument is also flawed, since the card was powered up for many hours, probably hundreds.

If you bought a Ford Model T in 1908 and put it in your garage, would you expect Ford Motor Company to perform warranty service on it today because the engine has seized?
Click to expand...

It is comments like this that makes manufacturer raise prices and give less services.

I bought a very expensive solid state card, I did expect it to last for years.
It was never under harsh conditions.
It stopped working because some manufacturing defect, so yes I expect my Model T to last for at least 5 years.

A professional would expect to use the equipment for at least 5 years to recover the cost of buying the equipment rather than rent.
 
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