we had a fire at my house on oct 16 and it was a pretty big fire which sent heat and smoke all over the house. My canon xh-a1 was upstairs out in the open with the lens cap off (but the UV lens on). It got dirty from all the smoke and though i hadn't tried recording yet, i did try to playback some minidv tapes and at first it was playing them, then it stopped.

This is the same thing which happened to my other camcorder a sony HC1 (much closer to the fire on the main level, but in a camera bag so it's not dirty at least). I recorded some footbage with my hc1 after the fire and went to playback and the camera didn't recognize there was a anything on the tape. I took the tape out and put in my xh-a1 and (when the xh-a1 was playing back tapes at first) saw that there was indeed footage recorded to it. However, sony said they would charge 511 just to look at the hc1 so my insurance said forget it (they are the onescovering cleaning/repair bills).

Anyways, i sent my xh-a1 to canon last week and they said they wouldn't charge just to look so let's see what happens. Hope to have positive feedback on this experience.

Shahryar,

How long did it take to get your XH-a1 back from Canon?

Mine has been with them for over 5 weeks (tape transport problems) and I can't get a response (after a week of trying) to find out when it will be repaired and returned.

Phil

Phil, I want to say say within a week or two weeks. It was pretty fast and I was really happy because they shipped back on their own. They had deemed the camera Beyond Economic Repair so I claimed it with insurance.