I just noticed that the Si2137 and Si2177 tuners are now marked as "factory special
order" and Mouser, where they were previously just marked "New at Mouser".
So my guess that those parts are a leftover tray with questionable future availability
might be unpleasantly accurate.
I'm still interested in pursuing a cheap tuner design to see if it goes anywhere. Even
if it turns out that some existing composite to HDMI converter satisfies everybody, I
think there would be interest in a small, inexpensive standalone RF demod to get composite
video out of vintage home machines without internal mods, and Crazy Cat Lady could morph
into that. Maybe it would involve custom hardware, maybe it would be a TV tuner dongle
operated in SDR mode plugged into a Beaglebone with custom software, maybe it would be a
general purpose SDR design that happens to be well-suited for video demod... figuring that
out is the fun part for me.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/