I bought a brand new Panasonic NV-GS11 last Christmas and had no problems with it. Havent used it for a while and when I'd fully charged the battery and gone to turn it on the small viewing screen (oh so technical wording!) was completely out of focus on the 'recording' option and when trying to play alreayd filmed footage back on the camera just a black screen was shown with just a tiny red square in the middle that just kept flashing. I've pressed the reset button, tried to change the focus from automatic to manual and it's made no difference. And I'm not really zoomed in either, even I'm not that stupid! Has anyone got any ideas what it is thats caused this? I don't think its dirt or anything like that, and I can't find any help at all in the manual! And it's not very old, so I didn't think it was that either.

[glesgaguyav]

Sounds like a repair is needed.

Try recording something and playing it back through the AV out to a TV, if you have a picture then you know it's not the optics/CCD that's at fault, it may be that it's a fault with the LCD.

Many years ago makers advised that camcorders should be "fired" up every so often to keep the CCD operational, this is not a factor nowadays but I have had a camcorder that developed a fault after a long period in storage.

[rickyt]

I have the same model but bought possibly over 3 years ago , so it wasn't a new model when you bought it .That said ,there a nice little camcorder with good bright picture quality, however mines developed a fault too . A red reset message appears on the screen .I have to press reset to re-activate it .Cannot think what the problem could be with yours though .If like you say ,you've pressed the reset button and it's still the same ,theres very little else you can do apart from take it to be repaired.Have you tried it using the mains adapter ,as opposed to battery . I would'nt of thought it will make a difference , but worth a try.