Greater than five weeks since I updated last, how time flies. While it would be fun to say I've been busy working stuff up under a shroud of secrecy, that simply is not the case. I won't go into details, but one facet of my last month involved a torrential downpour on a fresh coat of car paint.

etc.

Recently I've revived my interest in the video format. I think looking at the Datatek is partly to blame. That unit powers up fine, but there's a disconnect in switching so that each module is locked into bypass. I haven't dug into it further, so the list of speculated causes is still pretty long (and by no means exhaustive I'm sure).

Anyway, on to stuff that works.

The Vidicraft Detailer II. Composite video tools took a heavy value hit with S-video, and later YP_BP_R formats, and of course, have been rendered essentially obsolete with digital HD video, which is probably why I'm warming up to them now.

Nothing super fancy here, the controls are pretty well labelled, it would seem VNX is a video noise filter.

The three inputs are switch selectable, the fours sets of outputs appear to be distribution amplifier style (to be fair, I haven't tested this, only feeding one screen at a time).

In reading up on the Sandin IP plans, I was hoping to see some cool ICs in here (I hope to see some cool unobtanium ICs in every video device I look at) but honestly I'm also delighted to see discrete circuitry at work.

Audio output is clearly chained, I think the video connectors are loaded with 75 ohms but otherwise fed from the same source.

2N3904 & 2N3906!

There's less than a dollar's worth of actives in this thing, always reassuring. I also favor electronics assemblies that were manufactured within my region, echoes of a smarter time.