ADS Tech TV Station 100

If you've been using computers for a while, you might have a CRT monitor lying around doing nothing. Some lucky folks may even have an LCD monitor gathering dust, so why not spend £100 and make them useful?

The TV Station is designed to work without a computer. No installation software is needed; just attach it to a monitor's VGA socket to display terrestrial TV in all its analogue glory.

If you want to turn your current computer monitor into a TV and flick between Windows and Coronation Street, there's a lead for that too.

However, we felt that the computer's picture quality suffered a little because it was being passed through the TV Station before reaching the monitor.

The analogue television signal is received through a standard TV aerial (not supplied). You can also attach a games console or DVD player by employing the Composite and/or S-Video sockets.

The TV Station also has component outputs for feeding the picture to a projector, plasma or any other compatible display. There are no speakers on the TV Station, so you have to connect the audio to an external source.

In our testing, the TV Station immediately picked the five terrestrial channels and displayed them at good quality. Bear in mind, though, that LCD technology has come a long way since the first devices arrived, and older LCDs may suffer from bad picture quality.

The ADS TV Station comes with a remote control for changing channels, adjusting volume and accessing the basic menu options. You can change the screen resolution when using a CRT monitor, but LCD displays will automatically adjust to their optimal setting. Teletext isn't supported, neither is picture-in-picture when using your computer.

For a quick way to turn your old monitor into a TV, we feel that £100 isn't a big demand on your pocket. But if you want to use your current computer monitor, we'd recommend spending £40 and buying a dedicated PC TV tuner card.

You can also buy standalone digital TV tuners that support Freeview so, with the eventual ending of analogue broadcasts, a digital option might be a better bet.

There's no doubting its simplicity and £100 isn't bad. The product works well on CRT and newer LCD monitors and is reasonable value.