For those of you who haven't been keeping track of my other threads, I should preface this by saying that I received two of the first production units to ship in North America on August 20th. Both of our cameras had the split-screen problem on all gain settings and one of them had a very obvious bad pixel near the centre of the screen. We had assumed that our units had gone through a QC process, but as it turns out only a certain percentage were actually checked in that very first Canadian shipment.
After I thoroughly tested both cameras, I called my dealer and he arranged for me to take both of our HD100s directly to JVC Canada's HQ East of Toronto.
They immediately replaced both cameras no questions asked and gave me two brand new ones that had just arrived. The staff was awesome and I was told that now every camera that comes in from Japan is opened and tested, and the new rule is that if the split screen shows up at +9dB (or under), they send it back. The split-screen is considered a defect by JVC (@ 0 to +9db) and all it takes is a phone call to have your camera replaced under warranty.
I tested my two new cameras on-site and was not able to see the split-screen on either at 0 to +15db. I could barely notice it at +18db, which is more than an acceptable tolerance for me.
However, one of them had a bad pixel near the bottom of the frame, outside of safe-action. I told them not to worry about it, but instead they brought the head engineer out and he masked it in under 20 seconds!
He didn't use the service menu as described by Rocketeer in another post, but an ADVANCED MENU that seemed to be in English and pretty easy to understand.
He selected "PIXEL COMPENSATION," hit EXECUTE and then the camera spent a few seconds scanning the CCD, and then rebooted.
That was it... THE PIXEL WAS GONE! Just like that. Easy Peasy!
It was explained to me that instead of just "masking" the pixel, it "clones" from the surrounding pixels. It seems to me that it functions much like the Healing Brush in Photoshop.
I know you are all going to want to know how to access the Advanced Menu yourself, but I promised not to describe the key combination for obvious reasons.
If you have a bad pixel just call or take your camera to your local JVC technician. They should all know the information from the technical manual, or at least be able to find out from JVC. There are apparently many other functions in the advanced menu that can seriously screw up the memory in the camera - and I don't think the warranty covers an end user playing with it.
The bottom line is that I now have two brand new perfect cameras. Now its time to get to business.
Tim
After I thoroughly tested both cameras, I called my dealer and he arranged for me to take both of our HD100s directly to JVC Canada's HQ East of Toronto.
They immediately replaced both cameras no questions asked and gave me two brand new ones that had just arrived. The staff was awesome and I was told that now every camera that comes in from Japan is opened and tested, and the new rule is that if the split screen shows up at +9dB (or under), they send it back. The split-screen is considered a defect by JVC (@ 0 to +9db) and all it takes is a phone call to have your camera replaced under warranty.
I tested my two new cameras on-site and was not able to see the split-screen on either at 0 to +15db. I could barely notice it at +18db, which is more than an acceptable tolerance for me.
However, one of them had a bad pixel near the bottom of the frame, outside of safe-action. I told them not to worry about it, but instead they brought the head engineer out and he masked it in under 20 seconds!
He didn't use the service menu as described by Rocketeer in another post, but an ADVANCED MENU that seemed to be in English and pretty easy to understand.
He selected "PIXEL COMPENSATION," hit EXECUTE and then the camera spent a few seconds scanning the CCD, and then rebooted.
That was it... THE PIXEL WAS GONE! Just like that. Easy Peasy!
It was explained to me that instead of just "masking" the pixel, it "clones" from the surrounding pixels. It seems to me that it functions much like the Healing Brush in Photoshop.
I know you are all going to want to know how to access the Advanced Menu yourself, but I promised not to describe the key combination for obvious reasons.
If you have a bad pixel just call or take your camera to your local JVC technician. They should all know the information from the technical manual, or at least be able to find out from JVC. There are apparently many other functions in the advanced menu that can seriously screw up the memory in the camera - and I don't think the warranty covers an end user playing with it.
The bottom line is that I now have two brand new perfect cameras. Now its time to get to business.
Tim
