Devadas Menon wrote: > I think that this whole thing is an exercise in futility. ATSC signals are > one of the easiest to hack into, since the standards are well known and can > be downloaded from atsc.org. Tuners are available from a number of sources. Expect more to come into this arena. Not so long ago (198x) Philips demodulators were whole dedicated ICs (like TDA3561[PAL]/3563[NTSC]). These were used in their nice CTO chassis series. Very popular in the early 90's. They were huge ICs(designs) that along this last decade evolved into smaller single units capable of doing multi-system (PAL/NTSC/SECAM) with an amazing simple external arch and resources. This is a trend that probably will continue and repeat itself, but this time with digital enhancements (PCI/I2C...) and more likely following the trends (or horizons) of such industry strategies. > > The VSB demodulator may not have many suppliers. I do not think that there > is something called "ATSC Tuners". The Philips tuner can output the IF and > CVBS signals from both ATSC and NTSC broadcasts. If one need to decode > NTSC, then the IF/CVBS is fed to a broadcast decoder otherwise to the VSB > demodulator, which outputs TS. With a bit of hacking you even can demodulate VSB the "old fashioned way" (radio amat.) Tedious but not so hard... Need knowledge (an old demodulator card from the garage-junk may help too =)) ). The worst things of all this issues is that digital is far more complicated when considering the "maintenance" nature of devices. Explaining: Last decades "Closed Analog Devices" were those with no pub. available schematics/components - hard to fix. You always depend on manufact. (I myself always prefered "open source brands" with pub. schematics and parts widely available - easy repair - long life devices). But digital is far more complicated. If "Closed", you not only will have problems to have acces to parts and docs (schematics), but it may also be even impossible to execute simple repairs like accessing device memory/registers to readjust it or acces internal ICs data.... You may need special soft/firm/hard or you may even become a criminal if accessing "intelectual property" something or "protected" crap... (e.g. some monitors today need special devices to make repairs...) I think that this is the bottom line of all this... Sad era if it continues to follow these trends. Only authorized consumer centers will be able to repair "closed protected devices" and such brands tends to monopolize parts prices and etc... We can pressure a bit to change this to have better devices not worst (i hope) =) Abracos Paulo Castro -- HOM: http://www.momentus.com.br/users/hook/ GPG: http://www.momentus.com.br/users/hook/GPG-PauloCastro.asc
