Re: FW: [Discuss-gnuradio] MicroTune Tuners

[Paul Zawada]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Eric Blossom wrote:
> I suspect that if there's anyone out there who's willing, Microtune
> would be delighted to sell you a box of the tuners, and then you could
> be the local distributor for this group.  IIRC, the smallest box on
> their list was 72 units.

I've been looking at the possibility of doing this.  I haven't been able 
to figure out how to get Microtune to sell small quantities of their tuner 
to me.  The bottom line is they require a minimum order of $1000 which is 
roughly 50 units.  Over the next year or so, I'd probably need 10 units 
or so for my SDR project (assuming I settle on that model at all), so I'm 
exploring how to sell off the remaining units...  

The one thing that bothers me about this is that I see it as a stop-gap 
measure...  While I don't mind helping the gnu-radio community by selling 
off the extra tuners, I'm not particularly interested in becoming a 
fulfillment center for Microtune.  Furthermore, if this project is to 
really take off, we can't rely on volunteers selling parts off the back of 
a truck.  (Metaphorically speaking, of course. :-)  It would be nice if we 
could find a downconversion solution that is a little more accessable in 
small quantities.

--zawada


-- 
Paul J. Zawada, PE       | Principal Network Research Engineer
address@hidden          | National Center for Supercomputing Applications
+1 217 649 2233          | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign