Hey all,

I seem to have fried the firewire on my GR HD1, and the repair shop is telling me it costs $1100 CAD to fix! Does this sound reasonable?

They are charging me $888 for the part, plus taxes and labour. Is there a way around this repair? The camera is functional, I just used a bad cable and it hasn't been able to transver HDV or DV since. I tried on a couple of different systems.

Thanks

So what happened with the repair?

That sounded too expensive to bother repairing.

I actually opted for the repair, thinking that $1100 was better than buying a new $1700 camera, but how wrong I was. The first repair job rendered my camera inoperable, the second fixed the first problem but caused another... altogether I'm very dissappointed with JVC for making a bad product, and for their poor service.

Wow. Bummer. For that much you could have gotten a second camera, used, and have two for shooting and one for loading into the computer for editing, etc. Sorry to hear about the hassles.

Definitely getting the extended warranty for mine.

Question 1: Where was the service performed? Some local "JVC trained" general purpose TV/Radio repair shop, or was the camera sent to a JVC owned service center?

Question 2: did you get details on what the repair consisted of...

I suspect the high cost is that they /don't/ repair the circuit cards -- they open the case and swap out the circuit card as one unit -- and depending on what is attached to that card, that could include everything except the lens, sensor, and external buttons.

You're absolutely right, they had to replace one of several circuit boards. They let me keep the part, and after looking at it, it's hard to believe it's worth that much.

In answer to your question, I went with a service centre recommended to me by JVC, so no it is not they who repaired it. The person working there explained to us that the repair manual is missing information, which may or may not be true. After getting it back the second time last week, I was dismayed to find I still can't connect via firewire. I tried other cameras, and they work, but this one has been a real challenge.

Thanks for your interest, I hope to be able to post some good news soon.