If you like the look of Microsoft Media Center but don't fancy shelling out for a new PC, there are some alternatives. Pinnacle's latest offering is the PCTV Mediacenter 300i and consists of a PCI TV tuner, remote control and Pinnacle's own Mediacenter software.

The set-up process is simple and well designed; it took us just 10 minutes to get things up and running. A neat feature of the 300i's TV capture card is that it's capable of picking up both analogue and digital TV (Freeview) signals, but it won't allow you to receive both at the same time.

As with most PVR (personal video recorder) software, the 300i's interface is strikingly similar to that of Microsoft Media Center 2005. At first it responded extremely slowly, but after upgrading to the latest version (which entailed a tiresome 127MB download) things improved dramatically. However, switching between channels remained slow.

Overall, TV image quality was impressive. Viewed from a distance it looks good, although close up it couldn't quite match that of a standard TV set. Scrolling text was also a little stuttered and the audio was occasionally out of synch, though a restart of the Media Center would often remedy the latter.

Unlike with Microsoft Media Center PCs, Pinnacle's version won't interact with a set-top box. You can use the S-video input to hook it up to another source, such as a Sky box, but the 300i won't be able to change channels automatically.

It's a shame you can't use the analogue and digital tuners at the same time, but on the whole this is a good alternative to Microsoft Media Center.

Contact:
Pinnacle 01895 442 003
www.pinnaclesys.com

Specifications:

• Digital and analogue tuner
• S-video, Composite video input
• Remote control
• Mpeg1/2/3, Xvid, wmv, asf, DV-avi video support
• Mp3, wma, wav audio support
• Jpeg, gif, bmp image support