Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT review

The Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT is the first Freeview digital TV card we've seen with two tuners built in.

This means you can record one channel while watching another. It's also the first card we've seen, graphics cards excepted, that plugs into a PCI-Express slot.

Installation is simple and the card automatically tunes itself, finding all the available channels and downloading programme details for the next two weeks. Sadly you can't use the programme list to schedule recordings.

Image quality was spot on, easily matching the picture we received on our TV, while sound through our two-channel speakers was rich and undistorted. We also loved the bundled PowerCinema software - it looks and works a lot like Microsoft Media Center, playing DVDs and music, as well as TV.

Live TV can be paused or recorded with a single click and recordings neatly filed by date or programme name. You don't need to plug two aerial cables into the Cinergy to use both of its tuners. The signal is split inside the card - you just plug in your normal TV aerial.

Watching and recording live TV at the same time worked perfectly - we didn't see any loss of quality in the channel we were viewing, no dropped frames or gaps in the audio. The recording was flawless too. We particularly liked the option to always watch programmes with a slight lag - this means that the program is being recorded on the fly while you're watching it. The recording is a few minutes ahead of the footage you're viewing, so when you come to adverts, you can just fast forward through them.

The only slight snag with this card is that it has fairly hefty minimum requirements - a 2GHz processor with at least 512MB of RAM. If your system has a PCI-Express slot though, it will almost certainly meet these requirements. It's also a shame there's no option to access the paid-for channels you get on Top-up TV. Otherwise, the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT is an elegant, well thought-out alternative to the set-top box.