Just to clarify slightly, are you saying that when the camcorder is set ready to take a video but still in its pause state, you can view everything perfectly OK when looking at the LCD or viewfinder? Also can you still play back videos taken from some "previous" time? The reason for asking is that your model "can" suffer from the lens cap defect, however full info on this can "only" be sent to a "direct" e-mail address.