How long until my DVX dies and I must bury it in my backyard?

[RedLetterMike258]

Friends, I purchased my DVX-100A in 2004 and have been shooting with it since. It's a great, amazing camera.

I'm currently at 1,223 hours on the heads. I've had it cleaned professionally here and there and I take very good care of it in general. I've had the red-X appear a few times, but it's been a while. Usually I run a head cleaning tape in it or take it in.

My general question is, when will this camera die? I called Panasonic and they guy said it could go to 2,000 or 3,000 hours depending on conditions I'm shooting and storing it in and such. I think I notice a dip in picture quality, but I think it's my mind playing tricks on me. Anyone shoot with their DVX far beyond my hours? I shoot weddings and while I do have a back up camera, I fear this camera will die a quick painful death suddenly. :huh:

 

[craigbowman]

I've been using dv-rack (now its called Adobe onlocation) almost since I got my pair of 100As and going straight to laptops. The heads have like 19 hours on one and 12 hours on the other because I rarely have ever needed to use tape. Zero headware. Since its SD and the firewire connection to the laptops is 4 pin to 4 pin I've been able to use 30ft and 70ft firewire cables I got from Laird. (Beyond 75 ft. you'd need a repeater). Although I have a Red One package which is used for premium work, I still have a slew of budget customers for which the DVXs are fine. They can still generate a lot of cash in an average month so I don't think I'll be retiring them any time soon.

 

[Paladin]

Unless something other than the heads goes bad, there is no reason you would ever have to retire your DVX if you don't want to. You don't even need to use the DVX's heads to shoot with it. You can connect another miniDV camera as a slave unit to the DVX and use the slave for your recording without even having a tape in the DVX's drive. So, if the DVX's heads go bad, just hook up a slave and keep shooting. I bought my DVX100B last year and have shot over 100 hours of tape, but the DVX only shows 14 hours on its meter. If you're interested, you can check it out here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=142362