Cheap Mini-DV Cassette 2-Way Winder (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mini-DV Cassette 2-Way Winder

Does Not Work At All
To anyone interested, , based on the single unit I purchased and received through Amazon.com, I would highly recommend against this product. Unfortunately, I did not try using it immediately, so I am now stuck with a decorative piece of plastic - about all it's good for to me. Since the unit I received does not work at all, I would be inclined to rate it with 0 stars, but 1 star is the minimum. As for my experience with this device... <
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>When I received it, I did not have any batteries for it, and since it does not come with an AC adapter - another poor decision, in my opinion - I could only examine it without trying it out. The first thing I noticed was that the buttons were extremely difficult to utilize. I purposely did not exert any more than a moderate amount of force on either, afraid I might break the unit, and I was unable to get either button to do what I thought it should do - stick in place, or click, when pushed. On the other hand, the unit seemed solid enough - the cover seemed sturdy, and the switch for FF/RW seemed secure in its groove. <
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>Today, I finally tried to use it. I placed new batteries in it, then went to the buttons. The amount of force I had to apply to get the Start button to engage was surprising - and when it did... NOTHING. Further, the Stop button failed to release the Start button, which I suppose does not really matter since it didn't work anyway. <
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>Judging from the other posts, I have apparently received a defective unit, but even if it did work, I believe the force required to enable/disable the buttons would eventually cause problems. <
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>To be fair, at the time I post, there are 5 out of 6 reports of functioning units, so take my experience with a grain of salt - hopefully your luck will be better than mine.

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It does what I bought it for...
I bought this to save wear and tear on my video camera and to do occasional tape forwarding and rewinding. This unit does what the manufacturer says that it would do. I like the fact that it is not just a rewinder. I like to excercise my tapes before using a fresh one and this unit allows me to do that. It uses 4 AAA cells and seems to work for quite a while on a set. I currently use a set of rechargeable batteries and they seem to be good for about 5 to 10 uses before they wear out. I did have one tape door jam occur but I found that the tape was defective and the problem was easily fixed after I figured out how to extract the tape from the rewinder with the cassette's door coming apart. This unit is reasonably priced and can be carried in your camera bag without adding too much weight. This one will go with us when we travel.

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Overpriced but works.
The unit features both fast-forward and rewind via a switch. It has an auto-shutoff feature both ways. It's noisy and a little slow, but it is also small and portable. Others have reported that the unit as a "soft" stop where the machine slows as it reaches the end of the tape. This is incorrect as far as my unit is concerned. It also is quite difficult to take apart as I had a defective Fujifilm tape get stuck when the dust cover malfunctioned. On the plus side, it at least allowed me to disassemble the unit and reassembly was easy. The unit functioned fine afterward with no apparent damage or decrease in service. <
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>It runs off common batteries (2xAA I think) and the batteries last awhile. There is an input for an adapter which is a plus. It doesn't come with the adapter, however. <
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>For the price of $30, it should have a soft stop and be quieter. Easier and safer disassembly should be a feature regardless of the price.