Once limited to simply showing the action at the Wimbledon tennis championships in a window, today's TV tuners can turn your PC into a fully fledged personal video system.

You can watch Ricky Gervais while tapping away in Microsoft Office, record programmes directly to your hard disk and even pause and restart live TV if the phone rings during the cricket.

As always, though, some tuners are better than others and there are plenty of choices available to make it harder to find the right one for you.

Do you choose an analogue model that can also capture footage from your video or camcorder, or go for entirely digital technology compatible with Freeview or digital satellite?

Then there are those that come with built-in radio facilities, remote controls and integrated media burning software, allowing you to easily create your own library of Video CD or DVD material.

To see just what's on offer, we've rounded-up six of the latest options, from plug-and-play USB boxes to PCI add-ons and standalone devices.

GTA Black Gold Digital TV
The first of two digital tuner cards in this round-up, Black Gold is an internal card that comes with an infrared sensor and remote control. Usefully, it also supports hardware mpeg2 encoding and has an S-Video socket for connecting a video or camcorder. As with Hauppauge's Nova-t, the card provides access to terrestrial free-to-air TV channels on the Freeview system.

Although we expected installation to be more complicated than with USB offerings, it's paramount that you install the Black Gold software before plugging in the PCI card.

Put the card in first and at best it won't work, at worst you could have to re-install Windows. A small sticker provides a warning, but this needs to be spelled out in big letters on the packaging and on screen. You also need an Internet connection to enable the software.

This aside, things start to improve. Channel tuning is just a matter of following on-screen prompts, while a Media Player-style interface makes the bundled TV application more intuitive than most.

The software supports recording in a variety of video and audio formats, but GTA doesn't offer digital teletext, interactive services or Now and Next information on this version.

It provides timeshifting and is compatible with the net-based subscription electronic programme guide (EPG) Digiguide. You can download a 30-day trial, but manually scheduling recordings is straightforward.

Tests with both outdoor and indoor aerials were impressive, with much better performance than we expected on the latter. We'd have to say some channels didn't seem as crisp as with the Nova-t, but overall presentation was first class. GTA also provides a separate DVB radio player.

While it lacks polish in some areas, the Black Gold Digital TV is good value at £99. The hardware mpeg2 encoding for analogue video is also a major benefit.

Price: £99
Contact: www.gta-ltd.co.uk

Hauppauge WinTV USB Nova-t
The second digital tuner here, the WinTV Nova-t brings the Freeview digital terrestrial service to your PC. You can tune in to free-to-view channels including BBC3 and 4, CBeebies, ITV2 and even a crystal-clear Channel 5.

Despite being a simple plug-and-play USB2 device, the Nova-t took a surprisingly long time to install on our system. Moreover, the Teletext application must be installed separately after the main software.

Eventually we were up and running and it only took a minute to select our TV region and set up the channels. The tuner picks up paid-for channels as well as free ones, but there's no way to subscribe to these at the moment.

Hauppauge's software provides everything you'd expect including instant and scheduled recording, timeshifting and Freeview's Now and Next information. You can't click on the latter to record an upcoming programme but the software supports a full EPG function that should come to life when Freeview decides to broadcast one. By the time you read this it should also come bundled with Showshifter, which supports a subscription-based online EPG.

In general it's all easy to use, but the timeshifting controls could be a little more precise and the icons aren't as intuitive as Pinnacle's. A real remote control rather than a virtual one would also be a huge plus.

One thing we weren't prepared for was the picture quality. With an outdoor aerial in line with the Crystal Palace transmitter, reception was superb, with crisp images and sparkling sound. While some of the analogue systems here offer good images, the Nova-t blew them away. The unit can also pick up a variety of DVB radio stations.

Being a purely digital product the Nova-t offers an RF aerial input only, lacking the video capture facilities found on more common analogue models.

While you can buy a dedicated Freeview box for around half the price, the added functions and image quality make the Nova-t tempting.

Price: £109
Contact: www.hauppage.co.uk

Hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM
As its name suggests, this low-cost PCI-FM card offers both an analogue TV tuner and FM radio capabilities. At £69.99 it's cheaper than all but Pinnacle's PCTV Stereo, but, unfortunately, it's easy to see why.

While we all try not to go on first impressions, a messy external audio link lead, poorly printed documentation and conflicting installation instructions didn't help. It didn't take long to get things going, though, and we were up and watching quite quickly.

Unlike the Nova-t, the software for the PCI-FM is split into several applications rather than one or two well-integrated packages. There are two programs to watch and record TV. The main Win2000 software is awkward and confusing, relying too much on flashy design rather than providing a clear interface.

It does come with a SoftPVR utility but this just allows for one-touch mpeg1 recording - there's no timeshifting and half the functions aren't implemented.

The PCI-FM does support cable stations, scheduled recording, snapshots and Teletext, and has a handy remote - bizarre when you consider the more expensive USB Nova-t doesn't. The scheduler also works with the paid-for online TVTV EPG in Europe, but we couldn't get this to work on our system.

Picture quality was fine with a good outdoor aerial, though it lacked the sparkle of others, while the radio worked perfectly with a spot of fine tuning. The radio app is easy to use but, strangely, while the scheduler can record FM signals, there's no record function in the program.