20 May
2024
20 May
'24
8:50 a.m.
On Sun, May 19, 2024 at 1:08 PM Will Cooke via cctalk
<cctalk(a)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