Patent ID: 7039941

Claim:
For use in a cable television converter terminal, a passthrough circuit for passing a tuned signal from a tuner to a radio frequency modulator for output to external equipment, the passthrough circuit arrangement comprising: a first signal path, arranged to receive the tuned signal directly from the tuner and to provide a NICAM signal component of the tuned signal to the radio frequency modulator; and a second signal path, arranged to receive the tuned signal from the tuner and to provide at least one other signal component of the tuned signal to the radio frequency modulator; wherein the second signal path comprises: a channel surface acoustic wave filter, arranged to receive the tuned signal from the tuner and to filter the tuned signal to generate a filtered signal; an intermediate frequency strip, configured and arranged to amplify the filtered signal; a dual surface acoustic wave filter, configured and arranged to separate the amplified filtered signal into audio and video signal components; an audio and video amplifier, operatively coupled to the dual surface acoustic wave filter and configured and arranged to amplify the audio and video signal components; and an audio/video demodulator, configured and arranged to downconvert the amplified audio and video signal components to their respective baseband frequencies and to provide the downconverted audio and video signal components to the radio frequency modulator.