BM's skeleton in the closet forum?

Hey People,

i found this slightly scary post in the "Off Topic" Forum ...
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=21669

just to be sure about it, maybe some forum moderator can clarify on this: If you break your HDMI port on the BMPCC, Blackmagic CAN NOT repair it, nor can they suggest anyone who CAN repair it - even if you pay for it?

is this serious?

This has always been the issue with HDMI, SDI is the way to go for pro equipment.

brent, although the community here surely appreciates your concern for professional AV Connectors, thats not the topic here. The BPMCC has no SDI (or any other more sturdy) connector you could use instead of mini HDMI and the company cannot give you any hint how to repair this, even when you pay for it? thats ridiculous.

It is something that is repairable however it is considered to be physical damage (much like if you were to drop the camera and have a screen break or break a button) and under the standard camera's warranty is not covered. Pretty much every electronics company has a similar policy unfortunately.

That is why I always recommend to spend an extra $150 on getting your camera body insured for any accidental drops/spills/damage. A HDMI protector on the cage would also save a whole lot of heartache.

I think you didnt read the post of the guy close enough: although he would be happy if this would be covered by warranty, he is willing to pay any BM certified repair service to get this done. What they say is that neither they or anyone they know can repair this, even when you pay for it.

From my experience the monitor connector on every video camera i know is the part that gets destroyed most frequently. this applies to every camera ranging from low end s-video connectors to high end sdi connectos. if you design a camera that is a total financial loss if the monitor connector gets broken, i think you should seriously question your design skills.

The problem with badly designed connections is not confined to BMC, the Canon Mk11 and 111 both have a dreadful USB connection which has a tendency to break with the slightest tension on the connection cable, and as this connection is part of the motherboard the cost to repair can be considerable.

I really dont understand where you are going here.

what i understand from your post: If you buy a product you are supposed to analyze it's potential weaknesses and take precautions according to your discoveries and therefore never will get to a point where you need to service the product you bought?

are you kidding me?

you are a funny guy, geoff. thanks for making us laugh. and yes, i will buy a 10kg steel cage for my next camera, just in case the manufacturer forgot to make a wear&tear part servicable.

More or less yes. This is what people do to protect their investment. And no, I am not kidding you.

+1

When you make any sort of investment into a product you should always do proper research and make sure it's the right product for your use. With Electronics & Cameras in particular you have to treat them very gingerly. Quite often with Electronics in how they are designed, if a single part fails - quite often manufacturers won't just fix that part, they would replace the entire product.

Wear & Tear or Physical Damage is something that no warranty in the electronics world covers (Apple care's warranty is voided by Physical damage if that's any scale, and thats a warranty you have to buy), and most places don't "Service" their equipment, they usually replace a part entirely which for the BMPCC's tiny form factor may very well be all the cameras internals.

I would also like to state it's always better to call a manufacturer and talk to their staff rather than send in a Ticket/Email, as tickets go through a lot of random messages/problems. If you talk to a person there you could probably be able to more accurately explain your problem and what could be a solution to it. I've saved a lot of time and money by just simply calling people rather than emailing them.

you are a funny guy, Geoff. thanks for making us laugh. and yes, I will buy a 10kg steel cage for my next camera, just in case the manufacturer forgot to make a wear & tear part serviceable.

And Yes, I would recommend getting a solid cage for your Camera's as you are adding another measure of functionality & protection toward your investment - It's a $200-$400 investment to save a $1000+ investment. I use a tilta cage on my BMPCC to protect it from any spills(weighs .93KG or 2lbs), as well I have a 3 yr. Spills/Drops+defects warranty that will reimburse the expense for repair/replacement in case the unthinkable should happen (I never intend for my camera to be dropped or broken, but if it happens I'll be upset - but know that it'll get replaced and a "II" added to it's name when I get it back). On top of that I usually get a basic set of equipment insurance for most organized productions.

OK lets not continue this discussion as it cannot lead anywhere. It is very boring to discuss with BM fanboys that treat any kind of criticism of a company (or even only a product the make) like an insult to their family. Do you guys get paid by blackmagic for being the shiny knights justifying anything they do, how stupid or uncooperative it may be to their customers? Man must you be delusional not to see that bm's behaviour in this case is not acceptable. And this is not somebody complaining about one dead pixel on his LCD screen. The OP asked bm for somebody who can service a defect he has with his camera. He is willing to pay for it. Bm says they cannot repair it and they don't know anybody who can. That's unacceptable. And I understood that you guys find it totally acceptable but like I said you must be living in a strange Blackmagic Candyland that has little connection to reality.

If you don't get paid by BM for what you are doing you should seriously question your intellect.

And for the boring realname argument: ever heard of data mining? The forum moderators know my real name. but unlike you I am not willing to give my data (realname in connection to other parsable content IS data and there are people making a living of collecting and selling this data) away for free to ad-targeting and other companies.

Nope, Just applying standard logic for anyone who has ever rented or owned a piece of electronic equipment whether it be expensive or not.

I'm sure if the OP you linked had called a BMD office they would have a different experience. I have the same camera as the OP and I'm using a clamp on the Micro-HDMI Out to avoid said wear & tear. If you email a warranty person their response will be in regard to the warranty. If you contact someone and actually talk to them and they say no it's a different story. The fact that the poster had put Emails up doesn't really tell me anything.

I get that he's mad that he broke the camera, but if you calm the heck down and talk to a customer service rep on the phone you can get more reasonable results.I'd say it would be unacceptable if it came out of the box that way, but the fact that the user had it break while using it makes it a very different story.

One of the first rules of Film Production is that "If Crap can Happen - It will". Hence why any good A.D. and Producer will tell you Insurance is a must. Liability, Locations, and then finally Equipment are usually suggested - Equipment insurance is super cheap and a necessity for any set (especially because the BMPCC falls below the $1000 mark).

Geoff and I have our Real Names (as are the forum rules) on here.

If you're afraid of being "data mined" you're doing it wrong, uninstall your browser right now and stop search engines because that's how advertisers actually track you. The reason why those rules exist is for this exact situation where people insult others based off of their anonymity (which so far has proven to be true). You know what Double-Click is? Probably not, It's a Tracking Cookie that inserts itself in your browser whenever you move to a website that uses Google Advertising.

I am not paid by BMD. If I were I wouldn't be using a Magnus Tripod, Kamerar Accessories, or 1970s Nikon Ebay lenses. I still haven't seen the new Hobbit movies (my friend just let me borrow his DVDs for them YAY!).

As for you questioning my Intellect, You're making yourself out to be a complete and total muppet by my standards.

Forum rules can not overrule local privacy laws. As for the rest: you guys triggered the "don't feed the troll filter" so I wish you a nice day.

Well, you can break anything in a second if that is your intention, so surely no one makes a bulletproof camera and getting a cage + cable lock is a good idea, but hang on a minute.
If the HDMI port, or any other internal part gets damaged in a month of regular, normal use that's sad. But what is really embarrassing this time that they don't even recommend a service partner who could at least try to repair it. Really unprofessional reply. And he was willing to pay for it.

It's not unprofessional, it's simple not doable. If you break the hdmi port, you'll have to exchange the whole circuit board it sits on - and that's probably almost as expensive as buying a new camera (spare parts, shipping and time to pay for).

The camera is built to be used "as is", a small, pocketable, carry-everywhere device. Yes, it has an hdmi port, but even the fact that it is hdmi (and not sdi) indicates that it is not meant for everyday rigging, but as a means to review footage after the fact. The same goes for the power plug.

Of course one _can_ rig the camera, and i've seen some really impressive rigs where you had to search to find the pocket cam somewhere buried deep inside the accessories... but rigging the pocket cam is a little like rigging your ferrari cabrio to carry bikes on the roof: doable, but not adviseable, as the car was not build for that purpose. The only difference is, that nobody would blame ferrari for their ill-conceived design, why add a roof at all, when it can't even hold a bike-carrier?!

I honestly think the problem isn't that a repair couldn't be done; but that it would probably be cheaper just to buy a whole new pocket camera. This isn't something like a red we're talking about where spending $1k for the part and labor isn't that big of a deal to repair it-- but imagine if you paid $30 for the part, and then you were being charged $100/hr for the labor-- which is actually pretty cheap. It would basically cost you about 1/4 the cost of the camera to replace just an hdmi port assuming it would only be a 2 hour job, which it may not be.
Hence it's not that it can't be done, it's rather that is generally not economical to do.


ps, all numbers there made up b/s just to elucidate the point.


Aso, as for the protection thing. I have never seen a camera these days w/o some kind of cage. It's not just protection, it's also mounting points. This goes for every single digital camera system I've laid hands on even form major rental houses. Maybe the only exception would be an Alexa/Amira, which sometimes can go out naked.

if the hdmi port is cleanly ripped off the pcb its a matter of 5 minutes to put a new surface mount HDMI port and do a reflow with a hot air gun.

Of course the PCB could be broken as well, but that should be a matter of the service crew to check out and then make an offer on how much the repair would be not to reply with "we cannot repair" this, thats unprofessional. even if the repair is 600€ it should be up to the customer if he / she rather spend the 600€ or buy a new camera...

You're being unreasonable. You have no idea if it's not serviceable or not. You're assuming. That's unprofessional.

Why don't you take the camera apart, post pictures of the damage and demonstrate how simple and straightforward the fix is and THEN, you can complain that it's a fixable issue and make a case for why they should be repairing it. Right now, you're just blowing a lot of hot air.

If the OP knows somebody tech-savvy they could probably fix it themselves easily. but thats why you have to ask the manufacturer for a certified repair service: if it's done by an official BM partner, you keep the rest of your warranty. if you do it yourself the warranty is void, so even when when later on there is a fault that would clearly be fixed under warranty, you cannot claim it anymore.

thats why BM's behaviour is totally unprofessional. Every company i dealt with in the past offered some kind of repair service. sometimes the prices where horrendous, others replaced things for very reasonable prices (50€ to replace CF-Card slot on the 5D Mark II by official Canon service).

If the OP knows somebody tech-savvy they could probably fix it themselves easily. but thats why you have to ask the manufacturer for a certified repair service: if it's done by an official BM partner, you keep the rest of your warranty. if you do it yourself the warranty is void, so even when when later on there is a fault that would clearly be fixed under warranty, you cannot claim it anymore.

thats why BM's behaviour is totally unprofessional. Every company i dealt with in the past offered some kind of repair service. sometimes the prices where horrendous, others replaced things for very reasonable prices (50€ to replace CF-Card slot on the 5D Mark II by official Canon service).

Canon has been making cameras for what? 100 years? BM has been doing it for 3. Set your expectations accordingly.

If you expect a company that's just starting out in the camera business to provide the same level of service and quality as a company like Canon or Sony, you're expectations are simply unrealistic. Especially given their very public and often talked about "growing pains".

You guys want Toyota quality and Bentley service for your Kia.

They will find out soon enough how their business strategy is working out. From my work experience i know that nobody whose business is depending on a certain tool will touch a product by a company that cannot provide proper repair services.

time will tell.