A week after the FCC adopted the "Plug and Play" rules between the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the Consumer Electronics Association for DTV receivers (see last week's RF Report), chip maker Microtune announced availability of a reference design tuner-receiver that that supports the new rules.
The MT2111-PNP-RD "Plug and Play" tuner-receiver reference design is based on Microtune's MT2111 dual conversion single-chip silicon tuner. According to the Microtune announcement, "The MT2111-PNP-RD Reference Design is the first of its kind targeted to meet the stringent RF technical parameters of both the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and CableLabs OpenCable requirements. As a result, it is the only solution featuring a single silicon tuner to enable the reception of analog and digital television signals from both terrestrial (over-the-air) and cable. The Reference Design is engineered to enable superior reception performance due to its excellent channel selectivity and robustness against adjacent, image and other taboo channels, while maintaining compatibility with the most demanding cable networks."
Jon Koval, Vice President and General Manager of Microtune's Broadband Communications Business Unit explained, "While current prototype 'Plug and Play' televisions use two separate tuners, one for terrestrial reception and a second for cable reception, Microtune's reference design offers a compact design using just a single tuner."
Check the Microtune Web site for more information. I could not find datasheets for the MT2111 and MT2111-PNP-RD when I checked it this past weekend.
