Is this AVT-8710 the good version?
 

Hi,

I’ve come across this AVT-8710 and I wanted to check, if it’s considered one of the good ones.
Photos of the internals are attached.

I would really appreciate any insight — thanks in advance!

Welcome. :)

No, it is not.

That's the "black" generation of units. These actually cause timing errors, the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do. These final units were infamous for frame sticking, inducing dropped frames, etc.

These are not 100% worthless, and can give some wonky results to video/glitch artists.

But for conversion needs, completely unreliable.

Hi again,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Just to clarify — the unit in the photos I posted has:

SAA7114H video decoder

AverLogic AL422B x2

Altera EPF10K FPGA

Green PCB labeled LWE 88 94V-0

This matches what’s typically considered the “good” AVT-8710 configuration, right?
I know some later green-looking units were bad redesigns (e.g. with CTB or LTB chips), but this one seems to be from the earlier generation.

Let me know if I’m missing something — really appreciate the insight.

-- merged --

Thanks for the follow-up.

I understand your concerns regarding later units, especially some of the redesigns that used different chipsets entirely.
But this one has:

The original SAA7114H decoder

Two AverLogic AL422B FIFO RAM chips

An Altera EPF10K FPGA

And it’s built on the LWE 88 94V-0 PCB

From what I’ve gathered across various threads (including your older posts), that configuration has historically been identified as the good version — unless there’s something deeper with the timing logic on this specific board revision (v2.2?) that I might be missing?

I would really appreciate any technical clarification you can provide. I’m not trying to be difficult — just want to understand what makes this particular setup problematic.

No, that is not correct.

No.

I'm not sure where you're getting that information. It's wrong.

Never any of my statements.

For starters, multiple chips in that image are neither on early-gen/"green" nor mid-gen units. That's a deep black unit you're showing.

Nope, just looked at my near-EOL "black". Bog standard, not interesting.

Have you already bought it off of eBay?

I’ll see the black units selling on eBay for close to what the green units sell for on eBay and I wonder if those people are buying them for glitch art.

I think most of the buyers (and sellers) know nothing about these, complete novices/newbies. They wouldn't know a good unit from a bad unit. Probably 99% of sellers now (in the 2020s) have no clue what these are for, zero knowledge on how these work. They just think that they found a brick of "black plastic" gold.

The black AVT-8710 really doesn't work well for video/glitch art, and constantly loses grip on the signal. It's only desired if you want that sort of "here, not here" effect. Even then, I'm sure it's not always wanted by the artist, so it's relegated to a special-needs unit. Too many artists have bought those black units, then learned it's not overly helpful to them. No more for video/glitch art than for conversion.

For this art, better TBCs exist. For example, certain other Cypress, and certain BV, can add some trippy tearing due to those chips. That has far more use than a black AVT-8710. Or a TBC that accepts input, and bakes in a solid output for their displays (projectors, etc).

A good glitch artist should have about 3-4 TBCs, for both the various strengths and weaknesses. I've helped several artists (and DJs) with some fun setups for their work. I know the breaking point for most TBCs, so I can tell them exactly what to do to piss the unit off, and trigger various effects. I've even turned some of them onto gear stacking, where things can get even more fun. For example, if you feed in a certain analog error (using a tape made by hooking up two VCRs), and stack certain gear, you can have it create a psychedelic pulse tie-dye shirt effect. Pure analog (sort of -- actually using flaws/weaknesses of the D<>A chips in the analog-signal devices).

But that's getting OT for here, I digress... :o