XP - Inherent Firewire deficiencies? JVC DV

[sundown]

Okay, I'll be the first to post in this category. Saturday I picked up a JVC GR-D30U Mini-DV digital video camera at Fry's for only $249. It's a refurb but it looks new and has somewhat of a warranty. I don't take much video but the video I take I need to be able to easily move to my PC, something I can't easily do with my analog video camera.

Problem - apparently there is an inherent Firewire problem with Windows XP Pro that in many cases will make Firewire not work for digital cameras. Also, apparently JVC decided to not build their Firewire capability to industry standard specs. What a mess. I guess you get what you pay for. After spending nearly half of my day researching this problem, I've decided to give up and return it. I'll go buy the next level up, a Samsung at $349 and hope that works. I can't justify buying an $800 video camera that will mostly go unused.

My question is, do most of you with digital video cameras have no problems with plug and play Firewire for video capture or is Firewire one of those tricky things that often doesn't work, like USB years ago? I guess I just figured since digital video cameras have been around for a while now (Firewire too) many of the bugs would be worked out.

Bill

[Suhit Gupta]

Sorry to hear about your problems. The only digital video camera I have really had a chance to mess with is the Canon XL1 and it was very easy to use... plug in firewire and the data was automatically flowing between camera and computer.

Does JVC perhaps offer a firmware upgrade for the camera that might fix the problem, or perhaps specialized software that you need in order to talk to the camera?

Suhit

[that_kid]

I haven't had any problems with firewire and XP. I use a couple cannon GL2's, a samsung mini dv camcorder and a sony dac without any problems. In fact I prefer firewire over usb 2.0

[sundown]

No firmware upgrade, unfortunately. I searched this weekend through page after page of XP firewire complaints and not all of them related to JVC cameras. It's ashame because not only was that a great price for a digital video camera, I really like the camera. Oh well, Best Buy has a Samsung SC-D103 for $100 more so I guess I'll give that a try next.

[sundown]

Just to button up this thread, I ended up taking this camera back and exchanging it for a Panasonic PV-GS50D for about $100 more and it didn't work when I plugged it into my firewire port on my mobo, either. I went to CompUSA and bought a $20 firewire port pci card, installed it and now my PC sees the camera. So it was the mobo firewire port all along and probably not the JVC camera. I still think I'll keep this Panasonic though.

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