Ambery TBC-1 any good?

[DrCuthbert]

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!

[timtape]

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

[lordsmurf]

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).

[DrCuthbert]

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.