A bit of bad news for early adopters of P2

Hmm that is strange that happened to you. I was one of the first in this area to have a HVX and bought a 4 gig card as well. Everything still works like new! Sorry to hear yours broke on you. I understand your frustration.

~John
 
Hopefully mine is the only one 'cause I plan on buying the 170 or a new 500 when it is finally out. If I find that the cards are failing by that time, then I will reconsider.

I already own other HD cameras (Canon & Sony) but I like Panasonic's look and the DVCPRO HD codec. It is the risk of loosing footage without a backup that I fear.
 
I've had my cam over 2 years 4 months and the two four gig cards are rocking along as new.. and even if they were to die now.. knock on wood.. I'd say I've gotten more than my moneys worth, even compared to DV.. 2000 hours of footage x 3 bucks a tape= quite a cost savings.

I know how it feels when something happens to you, but from a community and industry wide reach P2 is rock solid and I think that you could feel safe going into that realm again. I don't think you can say that with the EX1 stuff and the horrible things that have befallen those first adopters, and who's to say how that will function in 2 plus years from now...
 
yeah, what's even worse is that it seems like he wants us to think that it will surely happen to us because his went bad after some time.
 
I'd give Douglas a pass since it's always worse when it happens to you and it would make me nervous if it happened to me.
I don't think he said anything too harsh, other than Panasonic should give him a free card, and he said that with a smile. :)
 
Panasonic has made a software card checker its called P2 card Format station. Unfortunatly it is PC only but it can error check your card and upgrade the software if it was a 4GB card there was an upgrade once for earlier adaptor this software will upgrade the software and then format the card and if there is an error it will tell you if there is physical problem in the card.
The website link is the same software download link for upgrade
https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/p2c_note_e.htm

Good luck
 
My P2 cards are fine, but what's funny is I've heard nothing but bad things before I came here about the FS-100, in fact at least 5 people told me it was an absolute piece of crap, avoid at ALL costs. I've heard of constant failures, horror stories galore, I don't know how any of you trust that thing. I wouldn't. I trust solid state cards.
 
Douglas Villalba said:
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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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.
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Douglas Villalba said:
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:
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dasher said:
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.
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Douglas Villalba said:
Panasonic sells it like it is indestructible, so not using it as mush wasn't the problem.

It just stopped working.
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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?
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Douglas Villalba said:
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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Douglas Villalba said:
Hopefully mine is the only one 'cause I plan on buying the 170 or a new 500 when it is finally out. If I find that the cards are failing by that time, then I will reconsider.

I already own other HD cameras (Canon & Sony) but I like Panasonic's look and the DVCPRO HD codec. It is the risk of loosing footage without a backup that I fear.
Click to expand...

dasher said:
yeah, what's even worse is that it seems like he wants us to think that it will surely happen to us because his went bad after some time.
Click to expand...
Where exactly did I say that?
 
It s good to hear about failures because it will help us keep track of reliability of the systems we purchase. We have about 10 P2 cards and had no problems. We have tossed them, dropped them and even washed them (oops). They all still work.

Over the 2 years we have found them to be reliable with no errors so when we do our major upgrade to our cameras in 4 months, we will purchase about 30-40 more.

Please keep us all informed about any future problems.
 
You might try contacting someone in marketing or PR at the division of Panasonic that handles professional video products (or just messaging Jan on this forum) and explain the situation and see if someone can help you out as a customer service gesture. That card was a hefty investment at the time and I agree with you that it makes sense that one would certainly expect it to last more than a year or two (Look at all the rental P2 cards that are used daily that are several years old and working fine!)

Panasonic has shown itself to be a good company that makes good products. It would seem to me that if you find the right person, somebody can bend the rules and either get your card working or get you another card.
 
look it's still a production line product, so failures could, wait, will happen, likely very early in that specific items life.

So far P2 has proven to be extremely reliable, so I understand that you got a fright, and doubt the cards, but give it another chance with a new card (I hope Panasonic swaps it for you)

- Derrick
 
I would suggest that you contact Panasonic service and see what they say about your card. I mean you have assumed the worst case scenario, but have not explored the best case scenario. Call or email Panasonic.service.

Best,

Jan
 
Hello Jan,

I had send mine back through my local sales rep and he obviously got the wrong response from the person he contacted at Panasonic.

Since then I had someone from Panasonic Service (I don't know if he would mind revealing his name so I won't mention names) call me to tell that he would replace it.

Like I said before, I had never heard of a P2 going bad before mine. The P2 is obviously a safe way of capturing and now I know how good the service is.

Thanks for answering this post Jan.

I am sure that the middle man that took the call for a bad P2 was in shock and didn't know what to do.

I was getting my old card ready to be sent back when I checked this thread.
 
Hi,

So the title of this thread about a bit of Bad News for Early Adopters Should be really Panasonic stands behind their equipment even for early adopters.
That worked out exactly the way I thought it would.

Thanks,

Jan
 
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