Canon reliability concerns? PS, no kidding, I was about to buy 2 of these.

[Lou Bruno]

Humm………we have sold hundreds of XHA-1’s in our shop.

I only know of ONE power supply failure. Tons of user error which are corrected by reading the manuals.

Lou Bruno

[Gary Bain]

I bought my XHA-1 a year ago and my first time to use it was on horseback. I transported it on horses almost every day for two months and haven’t had any problems at all. The only thing I don’t like is the background noise on audio. There is probably something I’m doing wrong but the noise seems to always be there. It also works nicely with the Adobe CS3 I use. Good luck-Gary

[Todd Roush]

Someone just gave me a 2008 consumer reports book and I was literally flipping through it killing time and guess what?
Sony rate of serious failure. 2.5%
Panasonic 3-5%, I can’t remember.
Canon 10%
JVC 10%

These are reported failures serious enough to return the item. This means that Canon has a 400% higher failure rate than Sony. I pretty much expected that. Canon does lenses, Sony electronics.

Oh well, I bought the Canon and odds are 90% that I got a good one!

At the price you could buy 3 over the z1U, have one fail and be justified!

S.

Todd Roush
Dreamscape Digital Media
Panny DVX-100’s but changing so Sony or Cannon HDV soon.

[Dave Matthis]

For what it’s worth, in my day job for the past nine years I’ve been using an XL1 and a Sony DSR130 DVCAM side by side, with lots of remote shoots and shipping involved. For the same amount of time I’ve also personally owned and used another XL1 on my outside projects.

In nine years none of these cameras has ever broken. One of the XL1s now has an occasional failure of one of the color channels, but a power-cycle usually resets it. All in all, I think either manufacturer’s product is a safe bet.