Japanese TBC 3DW Pro SKNET any good?
 

hey lordsmurf,

since i am currently looking for an external TBC (better than the ES-10), i stumbled across this perhaps rather unknown japanese TBC from a now bankrupt company. it’s called SKNET 3DW Pro.

https://www.ebay.de/itm/265878040360

in the link above you can find some specifications. you can get it for pretty cheap from amazon japan (used of course), but it wouldn’t help me personally since it’s NTSC only.

i’m merely interested in your expert opinion—at first glance

thank you & best wishes

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The Panasonic chipset in it is flawed, lots of documentation on that about 15 years ago. Not a unit I'd bother with. Values are screwed, introduces quality issues. I forget all the details now.

Somebody necro posted about it on Twitter in recent years.
https://twitter.com/nappasan/status/...468096?lang=en
It was also mostly line TBC, not really frame. It's like a crappy beta version of the ES10/15 units.

Other items badly used the chip, and it ended up doing nothing at all.
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...Reference-info
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...9rs/edit#gid=0
That person on eBay just randomly copied something inaccurate. eBay now often has bad info on TBCs, sometimes outright absurd BS. As I always mention these days, eBay is not a trustworthy place to acquire TBCs, odds are against you finding a good unit now. And that includes all the "tested" and "working" nonsense.

If you truly do not care about quality, then it's better than nothing. But that's really an oxymoron of sorts, somebody that doesn't care doesn't spend even $100. Those that care should pass, they'll be frustrated and disappointed. It won't be what they wanted.

Other Panasonic chips that have similar numbers don't necessarily act the same.

A lot of the video gear from that exact era, from these exact companies, were (at the time) infamous junk that many people avoided. These days, it's mostly forgotten gear.