Sony and Canon have both announced that certain camcorders may have faulty CCD’s. This condition can be accelerated by high temp/humidity, and if/when it does, the camcorder may exhibit a distorted image, or no image at all when used in “Camera” mode.
The fault occurs in certain Sony CCD sensors that use a cheap epoxy packaging that can eventually let in moisture. Canon has said that this moisture can then cause internal CCD wiring to become loose or disconnected. Details are sketchy, but it’s likely that the repair would require replacement of the CCD block.
This problem supposedly affects a limited number of those cameras/camcorders manufactured October 2002 through March 2004.

There is a long list of affected Sony camcorders (as well as still cameras), but of particular interest are the so-called Prosumer and Professional camcorders that are widely used in video production:
DCR-VX2000
DCR-VX2000E
DCR-VX2100
DCR-VX2100E
DSR-250 & DSR-250/P
DSR-PD150 & DSR-PD150P
DSR-PD170 & DSR-PD170P
DSR-PDX10 & DSR-PDX10P

The full list of possibly affected camcorders:
Sony Consumer Camcorders
Sony Professional Camcorders
Canon Consumer Camcorders

Sony and Canon have both stated that they will perform free repair, even if the camera exhibiting the symptoms is out-of-warranty. But the camera has to exhibit the symptoms first, and that’s a problem for those that depend on thier venerable VX-2000 or PD-170.

Info from Sony on epoxy CCD issue.
Info from Canon on epoxy CCD issue.

Camcorderinfo recently mentioned this issue concerning the Digital8 TRV-250, now Sony is admitting to a LOT more affected models.

As a side note; a more reliable, and also more expensive method of packaging the CCD is to use ceramic. I am not aware of which current models, if any, use ceramic packaging instead of the epoxy variety. This would be good info, because if they are shipping epoxy-packaged CCD’s to this day, then we will see this happen again in the future with the current crop of HDV camcorders.

UPDATE: Richard Baguley/Camcorderinfo blog has been keeping an eye on this issue.