Originally Posted by
PTravel
Either they're bad units or you've mishandled them. I've had two miniDV camcorders and one HD miniDV camcorder. Never had the slightest problem with them, and I've been banging around the world with them, shooting hundreds of tapes.
One is a Panasonic and the other is a Canon. If I mishandle them, many of my other things would break also, which is not the case.
Bad units do contribute to the MTBF numbers. So I can only call them "average". Your good unit are also "average" unit in the same vein.
There are some consumer items with relatively short MTBF but hidden from view. For instance the CCFL backlight in LCDs used in computers has a MTBF about 2-3,000 hours. So it is important to keep them off when not in use.
Cars are one of the longer working complex consumer products. At 200,000K miles and average of 45 MPH, that car only worked 4500 hours.
I venture to guess tape based cameras have MTBF of less than 1000 hours.