Ambery TBC-1 any good?
 

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with the “Ambery TBC-1” time-base corrector. Visually, it looks similar to an AVT-8710, so I'm wondering whether there are technical similarities. A search of the forum and Google doesn't turn up much history, apart from a user manual. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I have an Ambery TBC1. I bought it new perhaps 15 years ago. It's blue coloured. It looks similar outwardly and seems designed to to do the same job as the earlier ones but there seems to be a difference in circuit board inside, although I dont know if the performance is different. I suspect not. Yes not much on the www about them but I did find somewhere a photo of the older circuit board.

After a few years mine started to fail. The SMD electrolytic capacitors were on their way out, a common problem with these particular parts in many electronic devices over the last decades. Being a service technician I was able to replace them without much trouble and it's been fine ever since.

Mine gets quite hot in operation which I've tried to mitigate by drilling extra cooling holes in the case. It may also benefit from the addition of some stick on alloy heatsinks to certain chips inside.

The tiny push buttons are fiddly to use and I'm not sure for how long the switches will last but so far so good.

I never use it in the "auto" mode because it hunts for the tape's TV system and specifically after a picture disturbance it takes too long to lock on to the system again. So I always manually set it to whatever TV system the video being played is recorded at, eg: NTSC, PAL etc.

There are other discussions about these on this and other forums. A Google search may bring them up better than the forums' own search functions.

Hope this helps

These are essentially the unwanted/flawed "black" AVT-8710 from Cypress, which is why the board differs a lot. Ambery is purely late 2009 models, and is a "missing link" between green/black AVT-8710s.

You will run into frame sticking/freezing issues -- and it can actually cause dropped frames!

Don't use this for anything important, not for capturing/archiving tapes.

I sometimes suggest these to video artists, if it can be located cheaply. Or if you're a Youtuber that grab silly little segments for content adds, as it does knock out the anti-copy almost perfectly (almost, sometimes exposure issues happen, compensate with proc amp).

EDIT:

This thread actually began as an email or PM, but I always direct people to re-ask their tech questions in the forum, in order to share my answers/knowledge with as many people as possible. Unfortunately, some details were lost in this re-ask. This question specifically referred to an obvious "black era" Cypress TBC that was available (eBay?) at the time.

Anytime you discuss Cypress TBCs, the "green" vs. "black" generation issue must come up. Sometimes the tell is obvious (to me), sometimes not. The AVT-8710 rebadge is often easy, as it's literally black vs. green casings -- although re-casing are a problem in the 2020s. Other models and rebadges are not as obvious.

The root model of this unit is the CTB-100, which was never available directly for sale to consumers. It was a rebadge model only, sold to regional distributors. Worldwide casing colors differed. The Ambery (and Hall Research, and others) had mid-gen "Smurfy" blue(ish) colorings, while latter-gen had less-Smurfy duller blue. The silver/gray varied as well. But it can be extremely difficult to see these differences, without having both in-hand. CTB-100 had early-gen/"green", mid-gen, and late-gen/"black".

The "black" units were far more common under the Ambery brand, and odds are extremely high that you'll see these units "in the wild" (eBay, etc) in the 2020s. Due to construction quality, most early/"green" Cypress units have failed over the decades, including some of my own. But even the mid-gen units have mostly disappeared.

In short, "finding" an Ambery TBC-1 is a terrible idea. These Cypress need to be vetted (by me, or by another experienced user), or else you're probably throwing away good money. Random-buy units should be considered gambling, and you should never spend more than you would at Vegas or lotto tickets.

Thank you, timtape, for your thorough response. I appreciate the detailed review of the issues you've had and the resolutions.

Lordsmurf, your insights are great, as always! Thank you, too.

It’s good to have a couple of decent responses about this particular TBC on the forum. I’m not in urgent need of an FTBC, but I keep an eye out for them to potentially enhance my setup. This unit will be a no for me, but this information regarding the Avery unit may benefit others in the future.

Thanks again.