Yes, I think this is primarily beneficial for an out of warranty device vs. something that you could get repaired under warranty by the manufacturer.

Dan -

I removed the section about Clinton electronics. I spoke with the owner of Renova just now to get more clarification on this. While he did reiterate that he had a low opinion of Clinton product, he clarified that he has only repaired monitors from Clinton and not DVRs as was previously stated in the article.

He also says that he had a conversation ~3 years ago with your son in law about doing repairs for your products and that you shot the idea down.

Jonathan may add additional commentary to this.

In respectful response to Mr. Clinton who makes some very valid points: We have only repaired 3 different Clinton Electronics devices over the last 3 years – and they were monitors. We do not see any Clinton product coming in from the major integrators, nor the super-regionals. This could be either because of their three year warranty, or because our customers happen to simply not use a lot of the Clinton Electronics products. I would not know unless I received those products in for repair or my customers indicated that they have many in the field

It would be unfair to judge the robustness and longevity of any manufacturer's products without performing a statistically valid study over a long period of time. "Mean time to failure" is extremely difficult to predict. And there are companies that specialize in determining such. Renova does not.

Outside of the Security Industry, we specialize in component/board level repair for OEM's such as NCR, Xerox and many others. We collect the detailed repair data, analyze it and provide it to the OEM's so that they can effect engineering changes, drive efficiencies, be proactive in relation to field service, etc. It has been harder to develop such relationships in the Security Industry as it is a much younger industry and the technology is newer and more rapidly developing from both the hardware and software standpoint. Furthermore, much of the product has simply 'not been out there' long enough to require repair. We do, however, happily repair directly for several OEM's in the Security Industry.

I approached Clinton Electronics about three years ago to see my company could become an authorized repair center for Clinton Electronics and was actually visited by an executive from Clinton. At the time there was no interest expressed. I would not be surprised if Mr. Clinton does not remember this, as I never had the pleasure of speaking to him directly -- and would welcome such an opportunity.

I would never be foolish enough to state that either Clinton's or any manufacturer’s products are the "worst made"-- and from what I have seen at trade shows, Mr. Clinton's technology is pretty state-of-the-art. The writer of this article was mistaken.

But Mr. Karas was correct in writing that the degree of difficulty in repair varies widely from OEM to OEM and changes over time as they use different contract manufacturers. Renova has to spend countless hours in studying an OEM's products, often having to perform reverse engineering prior and developing a repair methodology specific to a product. We then continuously refine our repair methodology as we gather detailed repair data over time. Some products are extremely difficult to repair, others not.

We have specialized in commercial rather than residential security equipment, as the MSRP justifies the hour(s) a product might require to repair it to the OEM (and our customers') standards.

Renova has repaired perhaps one million circuit boards over the last 18 years at component level, often performing BGA replacements. A very large proportion of these have been SMT. The average time to troubleshoot a circuit board and repair it properly may take as much as several hours. Therefore, the replacement cost of the circuit board must be high enough to justify the cost of repair. This is only encountered in high end commercial security equipment.

I apologize to Mr. Clinton if anything I stated while speaking to the writer would have been interpreted as "worst manufactured." This is simply not true - to my knowledge and experience.

I have never questioned the integrity of IPVM

Since you passively aggressively questioned our integrity, let me respond.

This person offered his opinion on his overall experiences with Clinton and other products. He is entitled to his opinion and you are welcome to share yours. If there are specific, well defined technical questions to address, we certainly reach out to manufacturers but if it is just overall experience and someone else opinion, we do not.

I checked with Brian that the discussion with the subject on Clinton was specifically about DVRs. If the subject now wants to change his mind because you have publicly criticized him, we will certainly reflect that but we accurately reported this person's opinion at the time he provided it to us.

Hello all. I felt compelled to chime in based on my experience with Clinton Electronics over the past 10 years. I have sold/installed hundreds if not thousands of Clinton analog cameras and monitors. I can say I have no experience with the recorders. I really never had any loyalty to analog camera manufacturers. I can tell you that my primary PC monitor is a Clinton 26" that I purchased in 2006 and STILL WORKS like a champ. The mini dome cameras are of exceptional quality and reliability especially at the price point. For analog camera replacement I would pick Clinton over pretty much any other analog camera manufacturer. Picture quality is great and always has been. Their customer service is fantastic. Mr. Clinton, keep up the good work!

John, yes we do, and you would be welcome to contact me.