Suitability of current production TBCs?

[ehbowen]

So it's been made pretty clear that the current production AVT-8710 is not worth the price of admission. What about the alternatives out there...and what are the alternatives?

The only one I know of that's still current production is the $800 DataVideo TBC-5000. The price is kind of steep, but if you get what you pay for...I'd rather have a $2000 toolbox of Proto sockets and wrenches than a $500 set of off-brand Chinese crap. So, how good is the TBC-5000?

I was on the line yesterday with a sales rep from DataVideo asking some related questions. He mentioned that the -5000 was selling very slowly these days; reading between the lines it sounds like it may not be long for the current production world. So, if I can scrape up another $800 in the next few months, would a TBC-5000 be a wise investment? Or would I be better off trying to accumulate a few more pieces from the 1990-2010 era?

Finally...how good is my Google-fu? Are there other current TBC alternatives out there that I've missed, and how good would they be?

[lordsmurf]

First, you need to understand the role and era of TBCs.

As I've stated many times, analog consumer formats (especially VHS) are extremely chaotic. Broadcast analog was far less problematic, as the shooting/dupe/editing equipment had more stringent QC.

So 1980s rack-mount broadcast TBCs (and even msot latter revisions from 90s/00s) almost always work poorly with VHS or Betamax. Cleaner formats like U-matic, BetacamSP, 1" and even S-VHS were expected. And SP mode from professional VTRs or cameras. (Because Video8/Hi8 was more stable, it tends to be less of an issue.) I've tested pretty much everything, from DPS to Leitch to ForA to Kramer to Prime Image to others I can't even remember right now.

In the 90s, you saw a lot of VHS-centric TBCs from DataVideo, Cypress, and a few forgotten models from the likes of Kramer and ForA. These were in production into the early 2000s. The was mostly for converting/archiving VHS to other digital format like DV, or even lower-budget media programs in school, college, and small cablecos.

Then it ended.

The TBC-5000 is a non-VHS type TBC for broadcast sources. It's a legacy tool for legacy broadcast formats. The easy tell is that it has genlock, matrix switching, BNC, RS232, and other features. And it's really odd, because those are mostly analog editing tasks long ago replaced by NLEs. It's a specialty item, expensive, and not really in demand.

There are zero current TBCs like you ask for. None.

FYI: I've had some pretty in-depth conversations with DataVideo in the past. They don't really do marketing anymore, so no smoke-blowing up your butt. More often than not, they've been very bluntly honest. It's refreshing. And I've been explicitly told that the TBC-5000 is not for VHS or any consumer analog. What's really sad is that many of them don't even know their own legacy, and the company dumped most TBC info in years past. So they have no idea what the 100, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 7000, etc even do.

I'd not be surprised if the whole company folds in coming years, and/or bought by another in the same sector.

[themaster1]

For the euros of the forum , i've read the Snell & Wilcox Kudos NRS 30,50 or 70 are good for Vhs (unstable signal) and don't require bnc plugs

source: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/v...p?f=18&t=56262