Lab

TV Tuners

New technology has changed the way we watch television. Rather than watching five channels and recording them to tapes, you can now enjoy dozens of channels on a thin LCD TV, recording the programmes you miss to hard disk. If you can afford it, that is. LCD televisions are still costly and a hard disk recorder will set you back around £200 including VAT. Thankfully, your home computer already has most of the hardware you need. Most PCs have a big hard disk that's ideal for recording TV programmes and an LCD monitor is ideal for watching TV shows when you're not working. All you need add is an inexpensive TV tuner.

This month, we've tested 12 TV tuners that cost as little as £22 including VAT. Some fit inside a desktop PC, while others are ideal for notebook users. All can display Freeview channels, but some can watch analogue TV as well. Whatever you want to watch, we'll help you get the perfect picture.

Choosing a...TV Tuner

You need to think about what features are important to you before buying a TV tuner. Whether you're adding a USB tuner to turn your notebook into a second TV or building a dedicated media centre PC for your living room, our buying guide will help you choose the right tuner.

TUNER STAKE

The first thing to decide is what kind of TV tuner is best for your PC. If you have a desktop PC, you'll probably want an internal tuner that fits neatly inside. Most of the internal tuners here plug into a PCI card slot, so make sure you have a free slot before you buy. The Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT fits into a PCI Express x1 slot instead.

If you have a notebook computer or a desktop PC with no room inside, pick a USB tuner. These connect to a USB Hi-Speed port and have all the features you'd find in a larger internal tuner card. You need a free USB2 port, though, as older USB ports can't transfer information fast enough to use these cards.

Around 75 per cent of homes in the UK can receive digital terrestrial television broadcasts. This system is often referred to as Freeview and provides around 30 TV channels and 20 radio stations. Every TV tuner in this group can receive these channels. If your home falls into the other 25 per cent, you're limited to receiving the five analogue terrestrial TV channels. You can still buy a TV tuner that receives only these channels, but we wouldn't recommend buying one. From 2008, analogue broadcasts will be progressively switched off. We've reviewed four hybrid tuners that can view analogue channels and can also switch over to digital when it becomes available in your area.

AERIAL VIEW

Every tuner in this test could receive all the digital TV channels when using an aerial with a strong signal. The USB tuners also include mini aerials suitable for use on a desk or when travelling. Some worked well, but others were poor. Avermedia and KWorld provided the best mini aerials.

Poor digital reception causes the picture to break up, often producing large coloured blocks onscreen. When connected to a rooftop aerial, none of the tuners in this test produced this kind of problem.

Digital television is broadcast using the MPEG2 video format also used on DVDs. If you have good reception, the quality of the picture you see depends on the quality of the codec used to decode this video compression. Poor MPEG2 decoding is usually visible as blocky artefacts onscreen during fast-moving video. In this group, the Terratec Cinergy 2400i and Nebula DigiTV produced the smoothest MPEG2 video decoding. The other cards produced acceptable results that were indistinguishable from one another.

Poor analogue reception results in a noisy, speckled picture with noticeable 'ghost' images alongside the proper one. Kworld's DVB-T 310U and TwinHan's Ter D+A produced the best analogue pictures from our aerial.

BUTTON IT

Every tuner in the group has software that can scan automatically for channels and add them to a list. Very few present this list in a familiar order starting with BBC1, however. Most allow you to reorder the channel list, but a few don't allow you to do this. Our reviews explain which make customisation simple and which leave you constantly searching for the channel you want.

Most television sets are incredibly easy to use. The software that comes with a TV tuner should be just as easy to understand. Our reviews explain which give you all the controls that you need, and which are fiddly or overcomplicated. Most TV tuners include a remote control, and our reviews will alert you to the products that don't.

As well as allowing you to change channels and set up recordings, most TV tuner software includes an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG). The EPG shows you what programmes will be broadcast, so you can plan which ones to watch and record. The best digital TV tuners show the programmes coming up in the next seven days, but we found some that didn't work at all. Check our reviews to see which make life easy and which will leave you clueless. Analogue TV signals don't include programme information, but some tuners allow you to download this information from an online service.

If you're adding a TV tuner to a Windows XP Media Center computer then you can use Media Center instead of the tuner's own software. The table on page 96 shows which tuners are Media Center-compatible.

MOMENT OF CAPTURE

Many TV tuners, whether digital or hybrid, can also capture analogue video. This allows you to take video from a VCR or camcorder and transfer it to a digital file on your computer. Composite video and S-video inputs are most common. S-video provides better video quality, and the table on 96 shows exactly which inputs are included with each tuner.

Some cards allow you to choose the type of video compression and quality of the video you import. The Kworld and Pinnacle tuners provide the most extensive set of video capture options.