Tuner Hacks

Hackaday has a brilliant series of posts on hacking TV tuners. Check these out: Using a TV tuner as a high speed ADC Working software-defined radio with a TV tuner card Those USB TV tuners used for SDR can also grab GPS data Playing air traffic controller with software defined radio Putting a software defined … Read more

MP3 Patent Countdown

Various Sagebrush programs are able to record and play MP3, but only if you already have an ACM MP3 audio codec installed on your computer, which was common during Windows XP but lessĀ  likely in later versions of Windows. We do not bundle an MP3 encoder with our products because the technology is covered by … Read more

Anniversary of Betamax Decision

January 17, 1984 the US Supreme Court decided the case of Sony Corporation of America et al. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., et al., reaffirming that home use recording is considered fair use, and manufacturers were not liable for contributory infringement. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqxqYiptNe0]

USB Tuner Support for Vista

VCRadio version 1.9 has been stuck in beta for several months. Here’s why: We have acquired several USB TV/FM tuners to support this product, and none of them have drivers running under Vista yet! We really don’t want to purchase another USB NTSC/FM tuner if we don’t have to, but it might be necessary to … Read more

High Def Radio Startup

NPR Morning Edition has a story about a couple starting a business to produce high definition radios and the difficulties encountered bringing it to market. (link) (Our company looked briefly at venturing into the hardware world by designing our own HD Radio device, but were scared away by threats of a broadcast flag.)

Radio How?

The respected Secret Life of Machines TV series explains the inner workings of radio: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ehVVpY6XE4]

Example FM Tuner Design II

In a previous post we pointed to a design project report for a USB FM tuner . Here is another tuner project, a reference design by a semiconductor company wishing to promote its FM tuner ICs. The application note includes software, firmware, board layout, and parts list. The reference design kit is available for purchase … Read more

Convert WAV to MP3

I accidentally recorded a few audio files in .WAV file format instead of MP3. Is there an easy way to convert? If the .WAV file was recorded using MPEG compression, simply rename the file to use an .MP3 file extension, and the file will play in the vast majority of MP3 player programs and MP3 … Read more

Example USB FM Tuner Design

For persons interested in designing and constructing their own computer-controlled radio tuner, or those just curious about design issues, check out this college design project report, with more documents here.