Datavideo TBC repair experience?
 

I've looked at some "for parts" TBCs on eBay. I'm pretty good a SMD soldering and I have an o.scope I can use (if I could find the service manuals).
Datavideo products seem to pop up the most.

Those with experience, what are common faults in the Datavideo TBC-1000 and are they typically fixable?

Some faults cannot be repaired.
Service manual is under NDA.

Is there typically anyone here that buys non-working ones for parts?
...or is it basically worthless if you can't fix it? :depressed:

I'm trying gauge my ability to resale "for parts" if I can't fix them.

I have several "for parts" TBC-1000 units. Some really were parted out, others just need a repair (and me to have time for the repair).

I've actually offered my pre-refurb units to others in the past, where the last step was the recap. But you have to realize I've already pre-refurb'd these, which often entailed swapping parts, non-cap repairs, customizations, or serious cleanings. In a few cases, I gave it a cosmetic repaint with OEM-match paints. So I'm not giving them away, but it is with a generous discount. And right now, I have such a unit.

The units when received were trashed. Some actually did come from eBay; not bought by me directly, but via others sending them here. I generally did a trade-in, something I'm no longer accepting. But many more came from other sources, offline and online.

It usually requires "frankensteining" VCRs/TBCs these days, to get a good end product. Rarely can you buy a single bad unit, and create a single good unit from it. Not typical.

In terms of botched repairs, or truly faulty irreparable units, that's what the parted out units are from. Those really have no value as such. The VP299 is probably the best pricing benchmark if the VP-301x card (TBC-100) is hosed, and the 299 generally go a couple hundred bucks max. What makes the TBC-1000 valuable is when it's a working TBC, not a box of parts (or e-waste).

NDA on repair manual? That's insane. Why would they care anymore?

Good question.

There's stuff I've worked on over the years that's probably stuff under NDA but frankly, I doubt anybody actually cares but there's probably stuff I have on old HDDs that would be deemed either under NDA or at least 'commercially sensitive', but unless (hardly cutting edge) amplifier design in various ion-selective process instruments from twenty-odd years ago is your bag, I can't help!

I'm almost certain if I approached some companies I've worked for though, although the models are dead-and-gone they would not let me redistribute the literature.

The world is just a cruel place like that, it's often just easier to say 'no'. Doesn't mean it's right or fair, but just a reflection of how it is.

What are you asking for the pre-furb TBC 1000? Also, are the caps surface mount that need to be changed?

Thanks,
Marty Davis

Currently have 3 tbc1000s that I'd love to send to someone to recap and do the distribution plate bypass. Messaged the dude who is selling the crazy modded ones on ebay with no response. Messaged a dude on youtube who said he did these mods and never heard back.

At this point i'm looking for anyone with electronics repair experience and experience with these to refurb them :(

Also now that the dude with the modded ones is listed them at $2700, everyone thinks the 1000s are now worth 2k for even the junk ones.

At this point they're totally out of reach of normal folks. I know our lord smurf is adamant on TBC being a "required" part of the workflow, but I just don't see it being possible for normal people anymore.

Need to go hit up my electrical engineering friends and figure out a long term solution here. Some kind of new hardware or something.

I was going to write a long reply here, but it's not beyond the wit of a few enthusiasts to knock their heads together and come up with a better, modern product.

I'm still working (when I get a moment) on an ARM STM32 based USB ADC with field and line TBC, it's entirely feasible in 2022 to make a relatively cheap box (say $300) that does everything with open software so it can be a community project. Nothing may come of it but I'm about to open a discussion in 'another place' with my barebones project for input.

The prices for prehisotirc stuff that's failing though, I agree, it's pricing a lot of people out.

I own a TBC 1000 myself and found an easy work around to bypass the dist amp PCB. I made custom S-video cable that connects directly to the "TBC 100" board so I can go from there directly to my capture card. I recapped that entire board and some on the dist amp PCB for later use (not for capture). It's not the prettiest way to do it (or even permanent), but it definitely reduces noise by eliminating one unnecessary piece of hardware in the video chain.

If you're interested in having it recapped and/or having a cable made, just PM me and we talk about price. What's your use case for these TBCs?

I thought about the same thing for awhile and deliberated on paying that much for older hardware vs waiting and hoping something new came out. The pixelFX morph was suppose to have this capability, but in their most recent press release there is no longer any mention of it. So I wonder if it is cost effective (or even possible?) to redesign, recreate, and find new components especially during a part shortage (not to mention the service manual being unavailable). Looking at just the video processing board "TBC 100", there are a lot of custom chips I can't find anywhere online, and I doubt anyone will sacrifice one to decap those chips. Just my :2cents:

Conceptually it's not difficult to do, practically is a different matter.

Things have moved on a lot since the 'recommended' hardware was developed, FPGA based solutions are now in the realms of even dedicated amateurs, rolling custom silicone to accomplish what is essentially 'simple' digital signal processing has its merits I'm sure but much of it can now be done with off-the-shelf hardware if you're keen enough. Don't conflate this with it being 'simple' just surely possible.

I've got 32-bit ARM STM microcontrollers sitting here that cost a few pounds each, that was bleeding edge stuff twenty years ago at eye-watering cost. A whole 32-bit dev board costs about £20/$25US here.

In the analogue realm (I've just ordered some sync' separators this morning funnily enough) ICs are available, for how long I wouldn't like to postulate, but as it stands today they're off-the-shelf from RS Components (or Mouser, Digikey, Element 14, Farnell as you prefer) - although they're creations of the 1990s.

We have USB-3 now too, which makes USB devices actually feasible for quality DA conversion.

@Diopter_Doctor, judging by your handle, don't fancy taking a quick question by PM about my keratoconus do you?

SingMai made a nice product I just wished they added the USB 3.0 capability and Y/C input, For now it is only composite and SDI output despite the PDF article shows Y/C input, I contacted him and he said they are working on a new VCR so I guess another box with Y/C input is not in the priority list.

That is interesting, certainly looks like an interesting product.

I guess it's how effectively you can restore a Y/C from composite, I've been doing some reading but to be honest, a lot of it is rapidly defeated by mathematic abilities at the moment. It's a bit curious why Y/C is omitted though, if anything it's easier to deal with than a composite signal <- I'm only just learning about this though, so there's a good chance I've massively overlooked something.

Wait until March. Then PM me. ;)

eBay is full of idiots that know nothing about this gear. They're almost all recyclers, and wouldn't know a TBC from a toaster. It's like Storage Wars, and they think they found gold. The case could be empty, and yet red light on unit = "working!"

I'm 99% sure that BNC modded version -- which I do not suggest -- is a ghost listing. That guy has been MIA for many months now, and the eBay listing just renews itself. Odds are, if it ever sold, it'd never be shipped. I'm quite glad I didn't send him a TBC-1000 to be modded, which he wanted me to do. But I don't trust nobodies with TBCs.

TBCs were always in the $1k range, especially when considering A/V inflation of 20-25 years ago. And yet, many hobbyists owned TBCs back then. The difference was we had a steady supply, new units. So you had new pricing, and 50-66% used pricing. Now used pricing is 100% of the MSRP, because no new exists. Welcome to the world of in-demand used A/V (and photo). VCRs and capture cards are the same, unless you want low-end crap.

"Normal people" were never the targeted demographics. Normal people need to take their videos to a competent service, and done. Video gear is for the DIY'ers, the hobbyist, the semi-pro, and the pro. People that have a desire to do it, and are willing to budget the needed amount to acquire the tools. It's really no different those who shop at Home Depot, and those who call the plumber. (FYI: some plumbing tools a crazy expensive. But that's the cost of DIY, hobby, pro.)

What you refer to as "normal people" are not normal people. Those are cheapskate DIY'ers. The same person might, as an example, spend $2500 on a handful of vintage action figures to put on a shelf to look pretty/cool. But then scream bloody murder at the cost of an essential tool to do a task (be it video or plumbing). As my mom used to say, they don't have the priorities straight.

So I find these sorts of comments quite easy to shuck off.

There are corner/cost-cutting methods, what I refer to as TBC(ish), but I also let you know what the downsides are. So if you just don't have TBC money, then you can level down expectations, and still arrive at a decent outcome. Not ideal, not best, just decent, hopefully. With lots of caveats and exclusions, because TBC(ish) isn't TBC, and there is a fail rate.

It's not that easy.

It's legacy. It still has use.
It's not old and worthless tech. We have lots of truly "prehistoric" crap that is pure e-waste, not even useful as a museum piece.

That's exactly it. Most of the chips needed are no longer fabbed. What we have left are things like the ADI chips, which claim TBC, but fall flat on their ass when given VHS sources. Something new will require more than most here think.

It's probably more feasible than you imagine. Things have advanced rapidly in DSP over the last few years, rolling custom silicone or relying on a good deal of 'old' ICs isn't really required anymore. A lot of functions can now either be computed arithmetically from where I'm standing or assigned to FPGA? Do you not think this?

That's not to say it's easy, but I think you're just glibly discounting something - who knows what will happen?

I could be an optics repair man, or a photographer, or neither.

Haha! Fair play :salute:

I know a lot more than you think I do here. :cool:

FPGA is only part of it.

With most video info online, I've been very open, share, help, etc. But with this exact topic ... can't do that. Must be vague. What you're suggesting is actually somewhat amusing. If only it were that easy.

Politely, describing a video machine as 'mostly cap free' probably did sway some of my opinions as to your knowledge base in fundamental signal electronics?

Shall we whack our NDA's out on the table and compare them? :smack:

What am I missing here? I'm only sketching things out at the moment, but between fast modern µC's and FPGA I don't think it's impossible to cover most bases? Obviously, you can't just chuck these components on a board and shrug your shoulders, far from it, but in essence, why isn't that a reasonable place to start in 2022?

The only "critical" component of the Datavideo and AVT TBCs that is no longer produced is the SAA7111 and SAA7114 video decoder chips. From what I can see NXP has stopped making analog video ICs entirely, though they and related ICs were very widely used and are widely available NOS/Second hand. Whether there is something very magic about the sync detection in them though that's impossible to replicate I don't know. They also don't feature any notable line-TBC/horizontal jitter correction functions on chip which makes the devices mainly usable with VCRs that already include that functionality which are getting rare enough on their own, and come with their own tradeoffs. Hence, I'm not sure if exact replicas are what would be what you would really want to try designing.

Analog video decoder ICs that are still made include ICs from Renesas, Analog Devices, Ti and others. Afaik only ADV currently makes ones with line-tbc functions, which from some comparisons I've seen of e.g the dev boards at least can't quite match what panasonics chips can on extremely bad tapes, though for most tapes can work pretty well. As far as I know the Ti chips (used in ATI 600 and some capture cards, a number of dvd-recorders, and even some TBC units) are not as robust as the Philips/NXP ones on bad signals but not sure, the renesas ones I have no idea as the only thing I've seen their capability on VCRs using one of them is the IO-Data GV USB2 capture card so it's hard to judge other than that it's at least much more robust than capture cards using conexant chips.

I don't know to what degree it's possible to implement this with the output from a video decoder IC externally or if you would have to do the decoding manually in a FPGA or simialr to get this functionality.

The rest is memory, a CPLD or FPGA, and a video encoder chip and for those parts it doesn't really matter so much what the specific IC is.

I know LS is not a fan of the ADV chips, though I think something with the decoding capabilities of the ADV7842 dev board but easier to use and with open and updateable firmware would be a massive improvement over current USB dongles and fine for 95% of tapes.