A few years ago, TV tuners were little more than a gimmick. With low-resolution video capture, fiddly recording settings and poor image quality, they were no stand-in even for a VHS VCR. You couldn't rely on them to ensure you didn't miss your favourite programmes while you were out.
However, as with everything in the world of computing, PVR technology has moved on. Systems such as Windows XP Media Center Edition and Intel Viiv show how serious the PC industry is about conquering your lounge. As a Custom PC reader, though, you probably don't want to buy a whole new ready-made system to stick in your living room. Or you'll at least want to build it yourself so you have more control over what goes inside it. You may also not want to rely on MCE to provide you with an interface that you can easily use from the sofa. Fortunately, many of the latest tuners include standalone software that you can use with a remote control for most functions.
Although lots of analogue tuners are still available, analogue television, with its five channels, is at last starting to feel decidedly 'last millennium'. Digital broadcasting is still not available everywhere, but the dates have been set for turning off the analogue signal. By 2012, the whole of the UK is supposed to have gone digital, and some regions as soon as 2008. Even though your PC will probably be obsolete before then, choosing an analogue tuner today doesn't make much sense if you can already receive DVB-T in your area. Why confine yourself to five analogue channels, when you can have 30 digital ones and 20 radio stations instead?
So this month, we've brought together eight of the best desktop PC digital TV tuners currently available from the principal manufacturers, plus four tuners that are aimed at laptop users. There are numerous devices for a wide variety of interfaces, from PCI and PCI-E to USB 2. Although all of this month's contenders support digital TV, there's still quite a lot of diversity in the hardware, with some manufacturers squeezing both digital and analogue tuners, or two digital tuners, onto one card. With the latter, you can record one channel while watching another, or record two different channels at once. Best of all, as the original signal is digital, the recording should look as good as the live transmission.
Author: James Morris
Digital TV tuners