Silicon Labs have introduced a tiny 3 mm square hybrid TV tuner chip which supports reception of all worldwide terrestrial and cable TV transmission standards. According to its preliminary data sheet its design eliminates the need for an external balun, LNAs, SAW filters, and inductive power supply filtering. Some competing TV tuner solutions also eliminate the balun but can suffer from degraded NF and second-order distortion, which compromises reception. A fully-integrated 1.8 V LDO power supply regulator enables single supply operation, while a dual supply option offers additional system flexibility. Increased immunity to LTE interference and a harmonic rejection mixer filters out Wi-Fi interference and eliminates the need for external filtering.

Silicon Labs also released the Si2141 TV tuner chip with a similar spec but without analog TV signal capability. For advanced digital broadcast standards with high-order constellations, such as DVB-T2 and DVB-C2, the superior integrated phase noise of the Si2151 offers several dBs of improved reception performance compared to competing solutions. In addition, a software-selectable cable mode offers optimized return loss.

The chips are available now for both sample and production. The Si2151 is priced at $0.72 and the Si2141 at $0.70 each in quantities of 10,000 units.