Compro Australia VideoMate E650

Ever stayed up at night wondering how you can fill those tiny 1-lane PCI Express (PCIe) slots on your motherboard? Well, if you're after a digital TV tuner, you'll be in for a good night's rest tonight as Compro's E650 fits the bill. It's one of the few cards currently on the market to feature a PCIe interface and it has plenty of other desirable features, too.

It can display either analogue or digital (standard- and high-definition) TV signals, but not both at the same time, and it ships with an antenna that can pick up FM radio, too (and let you record it as an MP3 file). Pass-through pins on the E650's circuit board allow you to re-route the power button from your case to the card, and then use the card to power-up the motherboard, which comes in handy when you want the tuner card to wake up your PC to initiate a recording. Other hardware features include the ability to record from component-, S-Video- and composite-enabled devices, plus the card ships with full- and half-height-sized mounting brackets, so that it can be installed in a slimline, media centre-style PC case.

Compro supplies the DTV 3 software interface with this card, which like we've seen in previous models is still buggy. When the program is in full-screen mode, the mouse pointer will 'submarine' (disappear under menus), sometimes making it impossible to use the mouse to change settings; likewise, the control panel disappears too quickly from the screen, often before you've had a chance to perform your intended function. In order to make changes to the settings, it's best to have the main program in a windowed mode, rather than in full-screen mode.

The Compro remote control, which ships with the card, can be used to change channels, record and time-shift, play and navigate through files, as well as change the video source. Time-shifting is enabled by default (for 10min) and you can skip through a time-shifted program in 30-second jumps using the remote's rewind and forward buttons. The skip time can be customised in DTV 3's configuration page.

DTV 3 can record programs in MPEG II format (with customisable quality), and it does a great job. Shows recorded in DTV 3's default quality setting, from standard- and high-definition channels, played back smoothly in Windows Media Player and showcased very good quality. Additionally, DTV 3 can record an entire transport stream (that is, it will record all the standard-definition channels, as well as the high-definition channel of a particular station, and allow you to then flick through them at your leisure), which will come in handy once more stations start broadcasting different content on their standard- and high-definition channels.

As for its digital reception, the card found all Sydney stations very quickly and displayed them crisply, but colours were a little flat. Its analogue reception didn't improve on the poor reception we already get in our test location, but it worked. Its performance was swift on our dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo E6700-based machine with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 7950 GT-based graphics card. High-definition channels consumed up to 19 per cent of the CPU, while standard-definition channels lurked at around 8 per cent (analogue stations did the same).

For anyone who wants the ability to watch TV, listen to the radio and use their PC to plug in analogue devices , the E650 is a great option. It produced good image quality and reception during our tests, and our recordings were clear and viewable in Windows Media Player. We wish its software interface was a little better, as it's still plagued by 'submarine' issues and some strange labelling. That's the only thing keeping us from giving it a higher rating.