Digital TV receiver on a chip

Sid 03 snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

The digital transmissions carry the program audio digitized as well. You would only be able to get TV stations that still also broadcast analog, but I do not think there are any in the US any longer.

There were multi-band radio recievers back in the '60s and up that had multiple bands and many also had the TV broadcast band in them as well.

But no... no signals... and no, no chip.

It's probably an unrealistric ambition. The processing schemes that compress the television signal - video and audio - into a very fast digital bit stream are remarkably complicated and entirely digital, and the decoding process that corrects some of the errors that creep in is pretty complicated too.

Look at the kind of TV sound and image you get during a thunderstorm, when the error correction gets over-loaded.

It all works because you can make lots of complicated high performance special purpose integrated circuits remarkably cheaply, but only for that one special purpose.

How about an ota converter box? E.g.:

For $25 you can save yourself the work and have a bunch of features that you won't use :-)

On a sunny day (Tue, 8 Feb 2022 05:43:38 -0800 (PST)) it happened Sid 03 snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Type in google: ebay digital usb tv stick

first hit:

like European standard, US may need a different one. That said, I have several rtl-sdr sticks that are in essence digital TV decoders but can be used for a wide spectrum of applications with the right software. my spectrum analyzer uses that thing: and has radio too (new version has FM stereo too).

Lots of software and projects with it:

more: Inside, actually 2 chips: For the money a small miracle.

Very complicated. I'd buy a small portable TV, like the old haier. But make sure its atsc 3.0

Cheers

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: =====================

** No such thing exists. ** You bet it does. Fully digital in multi channel too. ** A "set top box" will do what you ask. Converts the digital TV signal back to analogue video and stereo audio. Should be able to get a used one for next to nothing.

...... Phil

What is the name of Digi TV modulation. There are chips that modulate video and audio to Digi Tv. So, sure there demodulator chips also. Chip in RTL dongle?

it would work, but I'm not sure how easy it is to control without a display

snipped-for-privacy@fonz.dk wrote: ==================

** True - the OP's question is rather nutty. Probably wants portable and battery operated too.

The name of this NG attracts many such narcissists.

..... Phil

Great minds... Although RTL-SDR's original purpose was to watch DVB-T, it's unknown to me how well it functions with ATSC:

Danke,

I actually laugh out loud at some of your posts. This was funny in multiple ways. First was the idea that because this guy wants something you can't appreciate, he must be a "narcissist". Then there is the fact of it being a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

You are too much sometimes!

If he actually wants to listen to shows over the air using an antenna then yeah, something that will receive the signal and convert it would be needed. If he just wants to listen to the shows, period, then he can possibly use pretty much any small, cheap computer to view it over the Internet. Many shows are available that way and a small computer is much handier than an old TV. I suppose a Raspberry Pi could be used for this and run off of Phil's battery.

Great minds again... Somehow your follow up was overlooked by me until now. ATSC compatibility still seems somewhat problematic. Your first link says it supports DVB-T2, DVB-T, DVB-C, and the VHF-/UHF band. But it doesn't support ATSC. It's hard for me to understand why anyone in the USA would buy it, even if it's "USA stock" with free shipping. :)

Danke,

Jan, one of the USB sticks might work. I would like to find one that I could control w/Arduino or something small. Thanks

Not any more, local tv is digital now. buy a tv dongle and plug it into a computer then set up the software.

Yes but it's part of the digital signal. the audio portion is MPEG1,MPEG3,AVC - a digital signal.

Use a small computer.

A USB TV stick to implement an SDR would be my choice. Then it is just a SMOP. Maybe a toy Linux version. eg

(not a recommendation - never tried that one)

Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote in news:su0a6s$1e9v$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:

There are SDR outfits out there, but they are NOT QAM or HDTV recievers inasmuch as they do not have the processor for it in them.

There are dedicated HDTV tuners which are in the form of a USB stick. Albeit a bit large.

There's plugins for tablets and OTG cellphones that would work (give picture as well as audio, for that matter).

The RTL-SDR dongles won't work with ATSC television. They don't have the RF bandwidth - they can only receive a 2.8 MHz "slice" of the VHF/UHF spectrum, and ATSC uses the same 6 MHz RF channel spacing (and nearly that much actual bandwidth) that the old NTSC analog TV signals did.

There are other SDR devices which can receive a wide-enough slice of RF to handle ATSC.

The dongles also aren't full "receivers" for any specific type of signal modulation. They simply filter and downsample and digitize the RF, and send it over USB to the PC (or tablet). It's up to the PC or phone or tablet to do all of the signal demodulation and the decoding, and this can take quite a bit of CPU horsepower. ATSC demodulation and decoding would take much more "oomph" than any Arduino-class processor I know of.

I've read of people successfully implementing an ATSC receiver using an SDR dongle, paired with GNURadio and a suitable signal-processing flow graph. Doing so apparently took a pretty fast multi-core PC.

Decoding only the ATSC audio signal would probably be a good deal easier (maybe by half) since one could simply discard the video portions of the data stream after demodulation.