Digital Video Stabilizer

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Price: $29.50    

Product Feature

• Brand new! in the box!
• Eliminates video related symptoms: brightening, darkening, color shifting, jitter, shake, & more...
• Stops rental movie picture problems.
• Full metal case provides better shielding.
• Dimensions: (L:3 1/2" x W: 3 1/4" x H: 11/4")

Product Description

Digital Video Stabilizer Copy Guard

Digital Video Stabilizer Review

First, I sometimes sell these units, but this is NOT intended to be an advertisement. To avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, I took this item out of my inventory.

My intent is to provide some guidance, alleviate some frustration, and clear up misconceptions thanks to buyers/reviewers who didn't bother to report the problem, much less exchange their obviously defective unit for a working one.

First, these stabilizers have been around for over 20 years. They all are manufactured according to the same basic design (if you're experienced with electronics, and handy with a soldering iron, you could buy the parts from numerous electronics dealers and build one yourself using designs/diagrams readily available online).

They are incredibly simple, passive devices, are as close to failure-proof as a product can get when constructed correctly, and they work perfectly on every tape I've ever copied using several of this model and older one exactly like it (though of much better quality, and well made). They bypass the portion of the video signal where Macrovision and similar analog copyguards reside, meaning the resulting copy is as good as the original. And because they ALSO "stabilize" the signal in general, they can get rid of other effects of tape stretch and wear and age, such as jitter and shake and other problems, meaning your copy will often look BETTER than the original.

Until recently, it was rare to encounter one that didn't work. The one listed here is almost identical to those sold for the past two decades. Savvy Buyers look for the old ones built in the 1980s because they still work perfectly: the companies making them then used higher end components, AND the quality of the manufacturing process, compared to the sloppy work evident in the stabilizers being made currently, ensured a close to 0% failure rate.

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Unfortunately, beginning sometime in 2010, two things occurred that resulted in a drastic drop in reliability and an unbelievably high percentage of defective or DOA units:.

1) The Chinese manufacturers, apparently attempting to shave every penny off their manufacturing costs, made an incredibly stupid change to the case design, resulting in a majority of units sustaining internal damage during shipping; and

2) Quality control dropped severely, likely because of increased demand and rushed production. Sloppy soldering of components particularly became more common, causing compromised or incomplete circuits on the boards, and less than perfect copies even when they "worked".

It didn't help the batteries in the units were the cheapest available, and in many cases appeared to be old stock that had neared or exceeded its shelf life. A significant percentage were dead before the units were shipped, and numerous buyers ended up with stabilizers that wouldn't power on until the battery was replaced...assuming the buyers thought to try that solution.

As a result, instead of defective units being almost unknown, and failures almost invariably the result of a dead battery, defects and damage increased to the point, in my experience as a seller almost HALF the stabilizers I received were defective or damaged upon receipt, and approximately 5% unrepairable.

If any of you still have what appears to be a "dead" stabilizer, the following information could help you get it working.

The stabilizer is basically just a small circuit board in a metal box that has just enough additional space for the required 9-volt battery. The original case design included several pieces of padding to keep the battery firmly in place. Some cases also included a piece of metal that served as a "wall" between battery compartment and circuit board.

The stupid design change I referred to above - and I believe stupid is a fair term to use here - was to remove most or all the padding that kept the battery from slipping out of its compartment. To understand why this was a catastrophic error, you have to realize that padding provided essential friction that kept the battery wedged between the case and the edge of the circuit board, even without a "wall" between them (which I believe should be a required part of the design).

Without the padding, smooth, flat 9-volt batteries no longer held tightly between the equally smooth metal case and thin, smooth circuit board edge were no longer secured in any useful way, and could slip out of their alleged "compartment" quite easily, given enough movement or shaking...

The kind of movement and shaking that happens during shipment.

And slip loose they did. It's a long way from China to a U.S. distributor, and whether by sea or air cargo is constantly subjected to movement, bumps, shaking, motion, tipping, unpacking...then when a U.S. buyer purchased one, the already shaken stabilizer experienced the further shock of being subjected to the less than gentle handling of the US Postal Service or a private shipper.

Thousands of batteries in thousands of units slipped out of their compartments, slid on to an unprotected circuit board covered with fragile chips, wires, capacitors and resisters, and in the course of thousands of miles of travel, fairly heavy, solid 9-volts proceeded to whack the hell out of the aforementioned components.

A buyer familiar with electronics, upon opening their defective stabilizer to try replacing the battery, would have realized the battery shouldn't be on top of the board, and would perhaps know enough to bend some of the whacked components gently back in place. I "repaired" dozens of stabilizers that way. The only reason they weren't functioning was because a metal bit of, say, a capacitor was bent so far it was touching another component, resulting in scrambled signals.

If you open your own defective unit, and can gently bend the little parts away from each other so absolutely NOTHING is touching anything else....you may find you have a perfectly good working stabilizer. Replace the cheap, old battery with a better new one, and the stabilizer you thought was DOA could function perfectly.

It's not all that difficult, and certainly worth a try.

If you're unlucky, the other issue - the lousy quality control and rushed, sloppy soldering - may have caused a complete break in a necessary circuit. With no electricity or signal able to travel where it's needed, unless you are willing to remove the board, examine it top and bottom, and assuming there's no damage to the circuit board itself, and you're handy with a soldering iron...

I'm indebted to one of my buyers, a man in France who was an electronics hobbyist, for some of the above information. Because when the stabilizer I sold him didn't work, he disassembled and examined it. On the bottom of the board (only visible if you unscrew it from the case), he found several capacitor and resistor wires loose and un-soldered.

Bless him: he didn't even complain. Instead, he repaired it, took before and after photos, and sent me the photos along with detailed repair instructions, saying it was a very easy operation, and he hoped the information might be helpful in future.

At that moment, I realized not only were over 60% of the stabilizers I received damaged by bouncing batteries, the quality control had declined so far the manufacturers couldn't possibly be doing the most basic inspection of the "completed" boards. Multiple un-soldered pins on a board with an incredibly simple design, and a relatively small number of components, can be seen easily with even a casual glance.

There was no escaping the fact NONE of the stabilizers being shipped, from that point in 2010 and continuing into 2011, could be trusted at all.

I stopped selling the stabilizers completely. I wasn't the only one. The manufacturers were shipping so many problematic or DOA stabilizers, most distributors stopped carrying them. Some refuse to again. And I know of at least one company that demanded the manufacturers take back ALL remaining inventory, and refund the entire order, not just the remaining inventory, because of the huge number of customer complaints and the number of refunds or replacements that were nothing but losses for them.

Shortly afterward, it became almost impossible to find a new stabilizer in stock anywhere. For over 6 months, if I hadn't already stopped selling them, I would have been forced to anyway, because there were none to be had. The manufacturers were shipping any - they were, I think, too busy essentially starting over.

If I hadn't kept my buyers informed every step of the way about the increasing number of DOA units I was receiving, and why I was having difficulty providing a working replacement...and if my buyers hadn't been absolutely wonderful in every way....I could have lost quite a lot of money and good will.

But between emails, phone calls, suggestions, technical support, and an amazing number of buyers who had NO experience with electronics actually being willing to try bending tiny capacitors and resistors back in place....

In the end, only one person asked for a refund, because I couldn't find a replacement for him anywhere. The rest ended up happy and with working stabilizers and - bless them again - left me 100% positive feedback.

As an aside, that's the best argument I can give other sellers for the importance of real customer service, including complete honesty. Hiding problems, crossing your fingers, hoping the product will work, or the customer will throw the defective unit away instead of complaining, is inexcusable and borders on fraud. Buyers will almost always forgive problems outside the Seller's control, but they will never, ever forgive, or forget, being stonewalled, ignored, and lied to.

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I've written all this to say, please, don't blame the DESIGN of the product. If it isn't defective, it works beautifully.

Please also note: damaged units don't always fail completely. Sometimes they work partially, or (for example) bypass Macrovision, but may leave a line of "static" across the bottom or top of the picture. Sometimes they will fail to block one effect, but clean up another, etc.

By the way: to the person who thought the unit would do DVD to DVD, sometimes it will, but not consistently. It depends on how the DVD was created and produced in the first place. Somewhere during the transition from analog and Macrovision to digital and DRM, copyguards became inconsistent. Some DVDs were dubs from the original video, with no DRM added - but the video still had Macrovision embedded so, yes, the stabilizer will work with those.

Also: there ARE stabilizers that are designed differently than the basic old-school one being discussed here. Several companies are selling units they claim will remove any type of copy protection, allowing one to make a backup of both copyguarded analog tapes AND DRM protected DVDs.

I do NOT know if they work, I haven't tried them, and I don't intend to try to learn about them. I mention them only because of the number of people who ask if digital video stabilizers will enable them to backup a commercial DVD. You are on your own with those.

I'm commenting here ONLY on this product: the same, basic stabilizer used since 1986 to remove ANALOG copyguards from ANALOG tapes....allowing owners to make one copy those analog videos to DVD for backup and archival purposes.

****The only thing THIS stabilizer is GUARANTEED to do, by the manufacturer, is copy from an analog source to an analog target medium, bypassing Macrovision, and ensuring the resulting copy is as good as or better than the original.

The instructions don't even show or mention copying tape to DVD, because DVD recorders didn't EXIST when the instructions were written, and the instructions haven't changed, at all, in at least 15 years.

But simply because some people state they were able to make a copy of a commercial/copy protected DVD using this stabilizer DOESN'T MEAN IT WILL WORK FOR YOU.

There is a HUGE difference between what MAY work, and what the manufacturer guarantees, i.e., what the product is designed to do. Buyers have no grounds for complaint if they are unable to make a copy of anything EXCEPT an analog tape. This particular stabilizer was and is designed to do one thing, and one thing only: Bypass Macrovision when making a copy of an Analog source.

You can record TO any medium, analog or digital, but you can only record FROM analog. If you want a product that is designed and guaranteed to copy ANY copy-protected video, including DVDs, don't buy this stabilizer. Buy one of the products that is designed to do what you want.

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If any of you still have what you believe is a "defective" stabilizer, feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment here. There are reasons BESIDES damage a stabilizer can fail to function.

For example, your equipment can affect how and when the unit senses a video signal, meaning you may need to do things in a very particular order. Or you could be using a bad RCA (component) cable, there could be a short in the playback or recording device, bad shielding (common on very old VCRs) causing signal interference, electrical interference from other sources, etc.

Last, and most important: YOU MUST USE TWO (2) SEPARATE MACHINES TO MAKE COPIES USING THIS STABILIZER: One machine plays the tape, another machine records the video, and the stabilizer must be connected BETWEEN the two.

Apologies for shouting, but there's no formatting available, so I can't put it in bold or bright red.

This means you can't use a Combination VCR/DVD recorder/player ALONE. There is no way to connect the Stabilizer between the two "sides" of a combo unit, because the video signal is routed internally. It can NOT be bypassed, not even if you tear the machine apart.

You CAN use a separate VCR to play the tape, and the Combo unit for recording. You CAN use two combo machines, one for playback and the other for recording.
Etc., etc.: the thing to remember is you need two separate devices, one for playback, one for recording.

And though I said "Last" above, there's one OTHER thing I've learned recently: SOME NEW MODELS OF DVD RECORDER WILL BLOCK THE STABILIZER'S ATTEMPT TO BYPASS MACROVISION. Some manufacturers now sell DVD recorders that are designed to prevent the use of a stabilizer to bypass the Macrovision effects, and will simply give you an error message that the recorder will not record a copy-protected source.

So stick to - and support with your business - manufacturers who DON'T try to deny you your legal right to make a single copy of ANY copyrighted material you have purchased - whether video, software, or paper - for personal use or backup. Boycott those who believe what the RIAA wants is more important than U.S. Law and individual rights.

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On a personal note: In response to those buyers who receive a defective product, and instead of behaving like adults and asking for a replacement or refund, got in a snit, threw away a replaceable and/or returnable product, and wrote a negative review of a Seller they didn't contact and a product they never used...

When you buy on Amazon, Amazon makes it clear to you, the Buyer, you are expected to know the terms and conditions of the sale, as well as reading the product description, making sure it is guaranteed to do what you need, not assuming based on hearsay it will do something the listing doesn't even mention...

So why were you unaware every Seller on Amazon is REQUIRED to provide a replacement, accept returns, refund your purchase, etc., not just if an item is defective, but for almost ANY reason?

If you contact a Seller, but the Seller won't respond, or refuses to take back or refund a defective product, or send a replacement, or in any other way violates Amazon's seller policies...all you have to do is follow a very simple procedure to file an A to Z Complaint with Amazon. They'll make SURE you get satisfaction - often meaning a full refund and not having to return the product.

So I have to ask the "reviewers" who pissed and moaned but were nonetheless too lazy to do the small bit of work necessary to get their money back:

Why would you literally throw money away, when all you had to do was request a replacement or refund? When you could have gotten a working stabilizer, and had all your tapes on DVD by now? Or had the money you spent back in your bank account to spend on something else?

In my opinion, anyone who throws a defective product away, and takes more time to write a "review" than it would take to get their money back - that is, anyone who literally throws money away simply because they get in a snit...

Is every bit as stupid as the Chinese manufacturers who through pure cheapness and laziness ruined what had always been a reliable product.

Sometimes the word "stupid" is not insulting or condescending or pejorative or unfair. It's simply a statement of fact.

Most of the consumer Reviews tell that the "Digital Video Stabilizer" are high quality item. You can read each testimony from consumers to find out cons and pros from Digital Video Stabilizer ...