Yes it looks like that. Can you hear the shutter operating? It should not be doing so. Or you could try the camera on the bench so you can see the shutter.
The camera should return an ASCII text string containing a date/time like "2016-08-02 08:15:35". There's a possibility that .NET string handling has interpreted this as Unicode. Do you have some special location set in your PC?
Of course (and I see that you have). It baffles me why people seem to be so reluctant to contact the hardware manufacturer's support.