Real-World Technology: About the company

	Real-World Technology Ltd
	The UK's Set-Top Box Tuner Specialist

Digital Satellite Tuners Digital Terrestrial Tuners

Real-World Technology has specialised in set-top box tuner design for over 12 years. The company was established in 1978 and incorporated in 1987, and is in no way related to any of the other "Real World" companies or organizations which have since emerged. Founder and Managing Director Stephen J Birkill, with 15 years BBC broadcast experience, was one of the first to demonstrate direct-to-home satellite TV in 1975, using equipment of his own design, and as a consultant went on to influence the adoption of pioneering technologies (block conversion, phase-lock loop demodulation, the 90-degree scalar feed horn) by the newly-emergent US home TVRO industry during 1978 through 1983. Birkill then spent four years as Technical Director of Satellite TV Antenna Systems Ltd. (SATVRN), Britain's first commercial satellite TV receiver manufacturer, before leaving to concentrate on RWT.

RWT's first licensed tuner designs were built by Wolsey Electronics, for their BSB (D-MAC) SMATV unit, and later the Starlet Astra receiver. In 1988 RWT began a nine-year relationship with UK receiver manufacturer Amstrad, and, working closely with Sky Television and SES Astra, helped define the specifications of the Astra DTH system with which Sky (now BSkyB) launched their service in 1989. The first Astra-specific receivers, Amstrad's SRX100 and 200, and later the first VideoCrypt IRD SRD400, featured tuners and signal circuitry to RWT's design, which helped the Essex-based consumer electronics company achieve over 70% market share during the first few years of the Astra service.

Amstrad's licensed use of RWT designs demonstrated the advantages of in-house tuner manufacture. The original tuner model was built by their Far-Eastern subcontractors, at first in Japan and later in mainland China, companies with no previous experience in RF, for a total cost of some $10 US, at a time when bought-in tuners cost almost double this amount and often delivered inferior threshold performance. Later RWT models were built for as little as $6.50.

Eventually Amstrad's dominance declined as other companies entered the UK set-top box market, one even being inspired to set up its own tuner design lab employing similar cost-saving techniques to RWT's own. RWT continued to support Amstrad until, when their analogue receiver production ceased in 1997, over 6 million RWT-designed units had been built (please note that the Amstrad BSkyB Digibox does not use an RWT tuner). Until 2000, RWT's design labs were established in a converted farmhouse in the Derbyshire Dales.