I've also had TVs with modular RF inputs. One was a huge plasma wall TV and the other a tiny cheap caravan TV but both had locations for an RF input card which I assumed could be replaced by cards to suit local national TV standards. These have no visible controls and, like the PC TV cards, probably have an I2C tuner module. The linux TV application xawtv has code for controlling these.
A similar device was used with BBC and Archimedes computers to receive the UK teletext service - it tuned to the TV services and extracted data that was broadcast in the vertical blanking interval. On Mon, May 20, 2024 at 11:13 AM Adrian Godwin <artgod...@gmail.com> wrote: > At one time I had a few Bt848 based PCI TV tuner cards for a PC - Hauppage > was a big player but there were others. Some were composite video in, some > also had a TV tuner section. > > I tried one as a video converter for PAL composite out from some home > micro - possibly a Jupiter Ace. It wasn't that great, to be honest and > doubtless the RF input is even worse but you don't really expect a great > deal from an RF output in terms of video quality. If you can find one (most > have been replaced by DVB-T cards : do they also accept analogue TV signals > ?) they should be almost free. > > > > On Mon, May 20, 2024 at 10:03 AM Tony Duell via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> On Sun, May 19, 2024 at 1:08 PM Will Cooke via cctalk >> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >> >> > Does anyone know of a small TV tuner that tunes old analog TV channels >> (US NTSC) and outputs composite or VGA or HDMI signals? I've looked around >> a bit but haven't found anything. It's relatively easy to build one, but I >> would prefer a pre-built solution. And I'm sure others have run into this >> same problem. >> >> Not for NTSC video, but for the UK UHF analogue TV... >> >> About 30 years ago we had a hobbyist electronics shop chain called >> Maplin, who produced and sold their own range of kits, many of them >> very good. When NICAM stereo TV sound was introduced in the UK, they >> produced a kit to decode the NICAM signal to audio. In fact it was a >> total of 3 kits -- the NICAM decoder board, a TV tuner/IF strip to >> feed it (if you didn't want to try to tap off the NICAM subcarrier >> from your existing TV 's tuner), and the case/connectors/tuner channel >> memory/etc.. >> >> I built the entire system for my parents who had a VCR [1] that could >> record stereo sound from line-level inputs but which pre-dated NICAM. >> >> I then realised that the tuner/IF board on its own, with a multi-turn >> pot added for tuning (rather than the remote control/memory control IC >> used in the full unit) would be ideal for turning the RF output of UK >> home computers into composite video. So I built a second tuner board >> for that. Still have it, still use it. >> >> -tony >> >
