Canon MVX100i - Changes between LP/SP, cant capture properly

Over a year ago I blacked out a tape by recording with the cap on for the whole duration.

I think I used SP and 12bit sound.

Recently I used this tape to record my daughters first holiday, in LP, the setting its been on for like a year. About 10 minutes into it I realised the LCD had gone blue, not showing anything of what I was recording.

I stopped, rewound and everything was blue, even though initially when I started recording it wasn't.

I noticed the tape was on SP at the beginning and then switched to LP. Then if I stopped playback it would go back to SP, then back to LP if I pressed play.

After a lot of rewinding, switching off and on and playing, I eventually saw about 4 minutes of the 10 or so I recorded, but with four thick grey stripes across it, so about only half the image is viewable in total.

I then connected the camera to my PC with firewire and tried to capture. First time round I saw the same image with grey stripes, and nothing but the black at the beginning and the end was captured, with some pink squares.

On a second attempt the gray stripes were gone and although you get a bit of a jerky effect, the 4 minutes of video are there, but none of the rest (which I reckon is because the camera was not recording at all by then.)

Anyway. I guess its new camera time, but I would like to know if it isn't just before I throw it away. This same camera has given me problems before when it would not record, or record noise, but it just happened about twice, and the problem would go away next time I picked it up to record.