MAXELL MDV/RW1 Mini DV Cassette Rewinder

Rewinding mini dv tapes rather than using camera which causes wear on the camera heads. Made several attempts to contact sender and was able to leave one message and as yet "no response". The unit works ok but wanted to get some further clarification about unit operation.

The first rewinder I bought had a loose screw floating around in it. Just an extra part? Maybe but it also tried to eat the leaders of the tapes I rewound in it. I sent it back and received a second one. The first attempt to rewind with the new one, the button wouldn't stay depressed. I had to manually hold the button down until the tape was rewound. However, after that first glitch, the second one has been performing nicely. Maybe I just had bad luck with the first lemon and the first try with the replacement. With additional luck, the replacement rewinder won't suddenly develop an appetite. (Luckily, the first rewinder did not damage the crucial part of my DV tapes so no film footage was lost.) I'd advise using a non-essential tape and testing your rewinder a couple of times before using it on your important cassettes -- just in case you have even worst luck than mine.

Likes: Product is small and runs quietly.Dislikes: It only rewinds. I have many miniDV cartridges not used in many years. I want to upload them to disc. Before doing so, I've heard it's good practice to wind them down and back to loosen possible tight winds. I bought the Maxell to avoid camcorder wear and tear during the winding, but now I see I'll have to wind forward in the camcorder. That makes it half-useless. And it was the only miniDV winder I could find at all.

it didn't work and I had to return it.

I just got mine. I had two tapes which my camcorder tried to eat and wouldn't rewind --- I was hoping if I could get something like this to rewind them then I could still play them in my camcorder (it plays and records okay, just has trouble rewinding sometimes). So I popped it out of the box, plugged it in, first tried it with a test tape (had to, after reading all you other reviewers' bad experiences!) and had no problem. Then I popped in the first bad tape and rewound it with no problem, then the second and the same thing, no problem. I was going to just take these two tapes to a video shop and have them repair them and transfer them to DVD which would have cost over $100. But now I think I should be able to do the transfer to DVD myself. So while I might have problems in the future like other users, I figure it has saved me $100 bucks, so it was a great buy for me. I'll update my review if I encounter problems, but in sum it worked perfectly for the 3 tapes I tried so far (2 which were slightly broken!)

Bought this little rewinder for my Canon 40MC. Figure it's a small investment to extend my camcorder's life. The motor on tape devices like camcorder or VCRs is only engineered to work for a limited time. My old VCR's motor died after just 3 years of pretty extensive use, and since I use my camcorder quite a bit, I figure this is a small price to pay. So far I use it to rewind each tapes after recording and have no complaints. So in my view its well worth the price for a peace of mind.

Piece of junk. I agree with the other reviewers. It ate several tapes before I finally just threw it out.

I used this piece of junk to rewind one of many mini DV tapes for a client I was working with and it ate the tape. I had to take the cassette apart and spend two hours trying to gain back his precious memories. Tape is so precious when it's so fragile and cherished memories can be crumpled to a stringy mess but if that's the way you like 'em - go Maxell!I too had all the problems listed in the other reviews! Before this, I bought Maxell's Hi-8 rewinder only to find out it does that same exact thing....eats tape.