banding on Optio WPi

Hi, I have a much more severe case of banding with a brand new Optio WPi that I have just bought. It occurs after I have taken a few shots. Sometimes a power cycle cures it for a while. I have tried a different battery ( ibought a spare) and different SD cards of different brands, and formatted them ll in the camera. I tried emailing the Pentax Service centre with some examples but haven't had a reply. You can see some examples at http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ammonyte579/album?.dir=/c830
Any thoughts gratefully recieved.

(1) I meant to post this under the horizontal banding on *ist DS thread.
(2) you need to save the files and open them in an editor like Photoshop to see the full horror!

Not sure if this has anything to do with it:
http://www.pentax.co.jp/english/news/information/20051130.html

Those images look very overexposed as well as having "scan-lines" in them. Very strange. I'd say it's a camera problem.

Matt

Dropped the camera in to their repair centre in Slough. Waiting to see what their guys make of it.

Turns out my problem actually was with the autofocus mechanism. Took them a month to sort it out (but Xmas and NY intervened). They also updated the firmware, so it looks like there is a firmware upgrade for the Optio WPi floating around somewhere.