Pinnacle PCTV200e

For fans of the goggle box, Pinnacle's PCTV200e is a rather nifty piece of kit. It describes itself as "anywhere TV", and is primarily aimed at notebook computer users who want to watch their favourite programmes on the move.

Indeed, it's one of the smallest external TV tuners we've ever seen, dwarfed by its own remote control handset. What makes it so different to other TV tuners is that the unit is provided with its own antenna.

The idea is that you can watch digital terrestrial TV (DVB-T) anywhere, as long as you have a notebook PC and the PCTV200e, unlike the ADS Tech TV Station which you can just plug into a TV for instant terrestrial television.

You can also use the supplied Pinnacle Media Center software to record, schedule and view all the TV, digital radio and internet radio stations that are available - again, something that's not possible with the ADS Tech TV Station.

Installation and setup are simple: just load the software and connect the device into a spare USB port. The PCTV200e gets its power via USB so there is no need to plug it into the mains.

You'll need a relatively powerful computer (Pentium 4 processor or equivalent with 512Mb of memory) but, if you have a USB 2 port, it's possible to record TV at very high quality.

To do this a fairly roomy hard disk will be required to store all those large video files, but those with recordable DVD drives can make use of Pinnacle Media Center's straight-to-disc recording facility.

It's probably important to point out that installing this product doesn't actually turn your computer into a Windows Media Center system. Pinnacle's Media Center software shares many of the features of its Microsoft namesake - such as photo browsing and music library features, as well as timeshift TV recording and teletext - and is suspiciously similar in look and feel. Any other similarities are, however, purely coincidental.

Nevertheless, it is a great way to get some of the features of a Media Center PC onto your existing system, and at a fairly reasonable price. Cheaper TV tuners are available, however. Pinnacle's own range starts at around £50 for an internal (PCI) analogue TV card with Media Center software.

The only real problem we had with the PCTV200e was with its built-in antenna. We tried it out in various situations and got mixed results. Reception in some indoor environments seemed to be a bit of a dead loss, for example, and we found that being close to a window gave the best results.

An adapter is provided for use with an indoor aerial or external (roof) aerial, but this somewhat defeats its purpose as a portable product.

Also consider:
Hauppauge WinTV USB2