GTH Electronics Future Plans.
European Regulatory Background
On July 1st 2006 new laws came into force throughout Europe concerning the use of
certain materials in new products. These laws are designed to reduce the amount
of substances such as lead from entering landfill sites. Although their
intention is no doubt good they are unnecessarily extreme. The amount of
lead in electronic products is small and other much more serious waste problems
have been ignored. The largest volume of waste is actually due to disposable nappies!!
However this new law made it illegal to manufacture products after the end of
June using lead based solder. The use of lead based solder is no accident as
it is still the best solution and the alternatives come with a variety of problems.
In particular hand soldering of electronic components is made much more difficult.
To further compound these problems the EEC has also ruled that manufacturers
should be responsible for recycling of electronics products as defined in the WEEE
regulations which come into force in the UK in 2007. This would add significant expense
especially for companies like us who export a large part of their production since
it is necessary to register independently in every EU country!! OK for large companies
but prohibitively expensive for small ones.
GTH Electronics Response
GTH Electronics has always used hand assembly with the result that our product
reliability is extremely high. Rather than change to outside manufacture, at this
stage in the product life we decided to stop production. Product has now all been sold
so the only way to buy a GTH Electronics ACE is through Ebay!
Alternative Solutions
For those wishing to replicate the ACE's functions there are a number of solutions.
For those working with digital sources we recommend using a software solution on a PC
using VirtualDub
or more recent VirtualDub2. Both are free and with their
internal video filters and other free plugins it is possible to achieve every video
adjustment which can be performed by the ACE.
By adding another low priced plugin, Neatvideo, you can even do noise reduction
with top class results.
The best free plugins are available from the author Donald Graft:
VirtualDub Filters / Tools and Utilities.
Make sure you select those for Virtualdub which will also work on VirtualDub2.
For emulating the Horizontal and Vertical Colour Shift of the ACE you need the "flaXen VHS Filter 1.0"
This is on his list of Hosted Filters and Tools
or specifically here flaXen's Filters.
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