Patent ID: 6995808

Claim:
A front end tuner for receiving modulated signals and selecting therefrom modulated signals in accordance with a frequency characteristic thereof and providing an output signal including information representative of said selected signals, comprising: an output port coupled to the frequency conversion circuit for receiving an analogue signal about a centre frequency signal and for providing the analogue signal at the output port; a frequency conversion circuit including a mixer for beating a local oscillator signal with signals within a predetermined band of frequencies to generate signals having frequencies within a predetermined channel band of frequencies and being representative of said selected signals and an oscillator for providing a signal having a frequency of between 40 MHz and 50 MHz and wherein the frequency conversion circuit is for providing the analogue signal about a centre frequency signal of between 40 and 50 MHz; a signal converter circuit for receiving the signals having frequencies within the channel band of frequencies from the frequency conversion circuit and generating digitally encoded signal representations of the received signals; the frequency conversion circuit and the signal converter circuit being in a form of an integrated circuit within a semiconductor substrate, the integrated circuit being connected with a first external terminal for receiving the signals within said predetermined band of frequencies, and being connected with a second external terminal for transmitting said digitally encoded signal representations.