In Holland at the moment many A1 buyers have a lot of problems with the latest Sony Battery software trick. It seems now that al lot of official retailers sell fake Sony batteries! Sony Holland says; we cannot take any action and leaves it up to Japan! Problem is that A1 loaded with NP-QM71D gives non function warning: " FOR "InfoLITHIUM" BATTERY ONLY " and shuts down all activities on the camcorder! The differences in the color and official blister we photographed, have a look at:
http://www.global-dvc.org

BTW The same false Sony battery works fine on HC1! No problem. Also it seems that the good old NP-F960 for VX2000 / VX21000 / PD150 / PD170 / FX1 / Z1 has a lot of illegal copies walking round. Who are these criminals doiing this? Is it the fault of Sony making battery prices too high? What can we users do about this? As goodwilling customer we cannot check the battery on the camera in the stores without leaving the product sealed. How can we solve this problem? What can we do? People pay a lot for these cams and only get standard a small baby battery! Are you having same troubles in the US?
What do you think?

I had the same issue with a battery for my DSC-V1. I bought it on eBay to a 'serious' retailer in Lübeck and it was clearly false. I called and e-mailed pictures Sony and they did not show much interest.

I do not know what is behind. I just will never buy again on the Internet when I have the chance to find it in a normal retailer. I lost a lot of time to get my money back...

I guess buyer beware. Return the bad battery they sold you. I bought non-Sony batteries for my HC1 and they work as well as the Sony one. Only cost $9 instead of $60. For $9 I was willing to risk that they didn't work. Bought them from eforecity.com btw.

I looked at your site. Looks like just a commercial site selling things. Are you trolling for advertisement?

Contrary to the article featured on global-dvc.org, non-Sony battery don't work with the HDR-HC1 either. I purchased one (20 euro's instead of 100 euro's), and I got the same response and a shutdown after 10 seconds. This is with a HDR-HC1E, I'm in the Netherlands.

Early HC1's did work with aftermarket batteries. Mine does. Later ones have revised firmware to block that.