There’s no shortage of low-cost TV tuners available for PCs these days, but Pinnacle’s PCTV Flash Stick

has one little trick up its sleeve that might help it stand out from the crowd.

Like most TV tuners, the PCTV Flash Stick is small – about the size of a pack of chewing gum – and is plugged into a USB port. It comes with a little aerial that allows it to pick up a digital TV signal so that you can watch TV on the computer and record programs onto the PC's hard disk. It only picks up the digital (Freeview) channels, so you’ll need to live in an area with good digital reception in order to use it properly.

This TV tuner also has 1GB of memory built into it, so it can be used like a USB memory key – for instance, to back up important files or transfer files from one computer to another.

However, some of that memory is also used to store Pinnacle's TVCentre software, which is what's used to watch and record TV. Storing it on the TV tuner stick means that you don’t need to spend any time installing it on the PC: when it is plugged in, the software will start and scan for a signal, so you can watch straight away.

This certainly makes the PCTV Flash Stick quick and easy to use, and the TVCentre software uses about 200MB of storage, so just under 800MB of memory is left over for your own use. But while we like the convenience of this approach, the extra memory does push up the price a bit. There are several cheaper TV tuners already available, and while the memory built into the PCTV Flash Stick is certainly handy, it’s far from essential.

Vista compatible: Yes