DCR-PC330E is a DV camcorder, not HDV. DV vs. HDV camcorders may exhibit different symptoms when the raw tape signal is altered. That's because of HDV's long-GOP MPEG2 encoding, which is somehow less tolerant and may cause full loss of video/audio ('blue screen') when GOPs (Group Of Pictures) are damaged.fk2010uk wrote:Also a post by acgold seems to describe this same issue as an alignment problem: the only difference in my case is that I do not get a blue screen, I can view the video but with bad quality (both sound and image, as I said above)
Back to your question, if you're not going to use that old cam for anything else, I think it's a good idea to try & have a repair shop do bespoke head alignment settings for you. Not sure Sony can do that, because here apparently (my speculating) you may be asking them to take the camcorder out of baseline tape specifications -- which Sony might not want to do, but a local shop might (bespoke work just for you).