Kworld DVB-T 310U review

The DVB-T 310U is a dual analogue/digital tuner.

In the past, we've been fairly dismissive of these - you either need Freeview or you don't, so there's no reason to hop between Freeview and analogue. Unless you watch TV on your laptop and sometimes find yourself outside the Freeview area. In this case, you'll find the 310U useful - it's an analogue/digital tuner that plugs into a USB port, perfect for use with a laptop.

Setup is easy. You simply run the software, click on either the digital or analogue button and then scan for channels. You have to find the digital and analogue channels separately, but you can then flick between them easily. Picture quality was good, even when the video window was blown up to full screen. Audio is sent directly over the USB connection - you don't have to connect the tuner to the line-in socket on your sound card.

As well as being a TV tuner, the 310U is also a video-capture device. It's supplied with S-Video and S-Video-to-composite cables that allow you to connect it to your VCR or analogue camcorder.

We were a little less impressed with the software. It looks old and clunky and the controls are rather small. The electronic program guide doesn't seem to work , nor does Teletext. Timeshifting, on the other hand, worked perfectly, allowing you to pause and rewind a live TV signal. You can also schedule recordings, capture still images from the program you're watching and use the software to browse video and pictures. The file browser, however, isn't well developed. The window in which the files are displayed is too small. When you open a file from the browser, the TV application doesn't notice. The television carries on playing over the top of the video file you've opened, even if it's a recording made using the tuner's software.

This is a minor glitch, but it's distracting and needs to be sorted out.