Terratec Cinergy 400 TV

Terratec's Cinergy 400 TV Mobile turns your notebook into a portable TV and digital video recorder, complete with a time-shifting option that lets you 'pause' live broadcasts. Setup is easy: put the card into a PC Card slot, hook it up to a portable or wall-mounted aerial and install the software that is on the accompanying disc.

The Cinergy software bundled with the TV tuner will do the rest of the work for you, with an automatic channel-scanning function to locate all available stations. You can then add channels to a 'Favourites' menu, edit their names and sort the list into an order that suits you.

The Cinergy software control panel is fairly easy to navigate, with buttons giving fast access to the Teletext and EPG (electronic programming guide) functions, station selection and input options, display settings (you can view multiple channels as thumbnails) and recording/playback controls.

To take advantage of time-shifting functions, though, you'll need to use the bundled copy of Intervideo's WinDVR software, which means going through a second autoscan process.

Along with the TV antenna-in socket, the card is supplied with a multi-connector cable with composite-in, stereo audio-in and S-video-in sockets. You can use the card to record video directly from a digital video camera, video recorder or satellite receiver with compatible sockets.

All common file standards are supported, and you'll need to select a compression setting before you begin capturing video, as around 11 minutes of uncompressed footage recorded in 4:3 QVGA format will eat up about 4.5GB of hard disk space. It's important to do this as there's no limit on the amount of footage you can capture in one go.

Contact:
Terratec 01252 870 726
en.terratec.net

Specifications:

• PC Card Type 1 and 2 compatible
• TV antenna-in, composite-in, stereo audio-in, S-video connectors
• Pal B/G(H), Pal D/K, Pal I TV tuner
• Cinergy control software and Intervideo WinDVR