looking at maybe starting dvb-c

[nozzer]

So the offset is actually 166khz and not 250khz as I've seen suggested? And it may be worth plugging in my signal amplifier after all?

The 166kHz is the step size of the tuner (their are other step sizes but thats the most likely for a cheap tuner). When tuning, the tuner frequency will be = TunerBasefreq + (StepNo * 166kHz). You'll notice that this means the tuner cannot actually set to many frequencies exactly but thats ok because the AGC circuits within the tuner can usually pull at least +/- 1 step size (or +/- 166kHz in this case). StepNo is simply an integer (usually between 0 & 4095 or 8192, depending on the step size)

 

[Squidmata]

Nozzer

Do you know anywhere decent to read a little more about this technical stuff?

Cheers.

 

[nozzer]

It depends on what you want to know !

If its specificaly about tuners and how they work then i'd suggest trying to get hold of a tuner datasheet.

You should be able to get the basic idea by doing a google/yahoo search for Digital tuner module

If your more into the actual standards used for digital TV transmission then you need to get hold of the ETSI DVB standards documents.