Canon ZR-10 Eating Tapes

[curritch]

I have a Canon ZR-10 (2 years old) that has developed the tendency to damage tapes generally in the first minute of tape. I use TDK tape almost exclusively. I haven't lost anything valuable yet but am getting concerned.

Would appreciate other's experiences both with Canon and other brands. Is this a characteristic of miniDV or is my camcorder developing a problem. I never had a problem of this nature with VHS-C. Assuming that my camcorder is developing an obscure problem can it be reliably repaired or should I just junk it?

Again will appreciate any info.

[energy80s]

Tape chewing is a tape guide alignment fault - very common on VHS machines. Nothing should need replaced, just get an engineer to re-align the guides using a test tape. The camcorder should provide amny more years of service.

[hxc3634]

To curritch.
I got the similar problem with Canon Elura 2. It was eating tapes and it won't spit out the tape now. I'm afraid of repairing it because I believe the repair cost will be almost half the price of new camcorder. Am I wrong?
Did you fix your camcorder? I'm seriously thinking about purchasing new one.

TO energy80s.
Do you have the similar experience? What will the cost of repairing the tape guide alignment fault?

[twonabomber]

my ZR10 does the same, but only with the Sony tapes. any other brand works fine. maybe i'll have the alignment adjusted.

[curritch]

I sent my ZR-10 to the Canon repair center and they say that it needs alignment to the tune of $160. I chose to do it since this is well below the cost of a new camcorder. I haven't received it yet so I don't know whether this was a good investment or not. I'll post in the future as to what I have learned.

twonabomber. I too thought that the original problem was only with Sony tapes. So I started to use TDK exclusively with no problem until recently.

Then it started to damage tapes without prejudice.

I'll keep you posted.

[hxc3634]

To curritch,
Thank you for the information. I will send my camcorder to Canon repair center. I thought their tape eject mechanism has a defect.
Please post your result after the repair.

I never have used sony tapes. I'm using TDK and Maxell tapes but I got the same problem so this problem is not from Sony tapes but canon camcorder. Also before my camcorder started to eating tapes, my camcorder started losing data stored in tapes, specially first 5-10 minutes when I transfer stored data to my computer via firewire.

[hxc3634]

I saw many posts about tape eating problem in Amazon.com ZR10 user reviews. One of the posts is interesting.

Reviewer: A customer from Chicago, IL, USA
I've had this MiniDV Camcorder for about a year and so far, it has had to be sent back to Canon to be repaired 3 times. Each time, they say they had fixed it and listed the parts that they supposedly replaced, but after a few minutes, the problem returned. This camcorder is very compact, but has low video and photo quality with a small LCD.

So I'm still reluctant to repair my camcorder after reading this post.