I bought the above product from Argos on 12/7/08 ( for £219.19), so it is now coming towards the end of its 12 month guarantee. This is my 3rd Hitachi camcorder as I had trouble with the first one (lower model Hitachi with just mini DVD not HDD ) that would turn on for no reason at all and battery would consistently be flat, the 2nd one just stopped working and recorded now and again. So I got this one on the above date. All was going well we went to Spain and recorded my childern on the beach 1st steps for the 2yr old (he was 15mths then ) etc... Then when it came to tranferring the data it took 4 hours to drag and drop all the scenes, finally I did all of this and then when I played them back there was no sound. I have yet to find another 4 hours to try again and have lost the will, now all the valuble footage is stuck on the Hard drive, I took it to a shop to see if they could put it onto DVD for me but no joy. So I decided that I would just view the footage on the TV through the cable connected to the camera.
Now my Hard Drive is full I have to use the mini DVD's instead, well what a nightmare, the amount of times this system has let me down at the most memorible moments its shocking. I have tried all different types of DVD's to see if it is the brand I am using but afraid its not. It always keeps saying an error has occured do I want to repair it now, you have to say yes when you do it says plug in the ac adapter, this is always not possible as I am out and about filming, not: sat in my house. I will list just a few of the events this Hitachi camera has made me miss out filming ( and this I promise is not made up ) : -

My 5 year old boy Thomas sports day
Carol service at Christmas my 5yr old was in at Church
On holiday in Perranporth when he went on his first Go Kart - error has occured
My 2 year old birthday party blowing out candles
We hired a big Red party bus outside our house when Thomas was 5 and I missed the lot as the disc went corrupt ? Sent this disc off and awaiting a report, could cost £75 but may be able to retrieve the data
Went to Germany to Nurburg ring and filmed my friend in his BMW M5, again error on disc occured
All of our holiday in Perranporth not captured as kept getting error logs, tried different discs again

This may sound very sad, well it is, I am sorry but this product has proved so unreliable and upsetting it has caused numerous rows amongst myself and the wife I have to tell you about it..!
I am now on e bay looking for a cheap mini cassette camera but do not want to go backwards. The disc I have in now is not creating thumbnails so again another 20 mins of wasted footage lost.

Please feel free to phone me to discuss, I would like to talk to you about it . I am always very busy at work as a Regional Sales Manager for Kerry Foods dealing with customer complaints, never thought I would be the other side !!

Any ideas, solutions to my problems and restore some faith back into Hitachi please let me know any views you have or plans in place for issues like this raised, compensation would be greatly welcomed or a better Camcorder that IS reliable ..!

Thanks

Philip Stone
07810 834478
01386 443780

5 St Margarets road
Evesham
Worcestershire
WR11 2 GD