[AVWotcha]

Please advise...

I have a 3 year old Sony DCR-PC100 and recently I was on holiday in Tanzania. At the time I was running out of tapes so I figured I'd record over a scratch tape. After recording a little on it I thought I should check to see it was recording ok but it turned out that when playing back the picture was striped with alternate stripes of the newly recorded and previously recorded footage !

I then went back to another tape to see if that had recorded ok but the camera treated it as if it was blank ! I tried a couple more to no avail and it eventually came up with a "use cleaner tape" message. To get myself out of a hole (I had to use my camera) I borrowed a minidv cleaner tape and ran it for a few seconds. This seemed to clear the problem, but I've not put the original tape back in for fear of knacking the camera even more.

What should I do ? Should I get the camera serviced ? if so, where can I take it/send it ?

Or maybe it was just because I was reusing a poor quality tape that the camera got confused and thought it needed cleaning ?

If you have cleaned the heads and its working again then carry on using it. If it happens again then I would consider having it serviced. Putting the tape back in the camera is unlikely to cause any damage, but check first that the tape itself appears to be in good condition (visual check). e.g. tightly wound on the spools, no kinks or twists. If you need to get it serviced then it might be worth checking out these guys:

http://www.morrisrepairservices.com/

They also operate a collection and delivery service