I have had 3 people with the same identical camera with the same identical problem. I got mine fixed because I hated the idea of throwing it away. When it quit, we had very little record time on it and already had over $500 into it with accessories we had bought for it. An electronics shop wanted $300 to fix it. My husband said if I just order the part for it from JVC, he would pull it apart and fix it. So that's what I did. It works beautifully now. I really think that JVC put bad CCD's in alot of these cameras. Email me if you want to know how we fixed it.