Like the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 900, the Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS is a hybrid digital/analogue tuner.

The plastic case of the tuner has a cheerful orange and white colour scheme, which is carried through to the full-size remote control, with its orange buttons and white legend.

A 2.5mm stereo jack is used for the aerial connection – a short adapter cable is provided for connection to a standard coaxial aerial. The 140mm wire aerial has a magnetic base and a 1.2m cable, terminating in a 3mm jack plug.

Also included are a short USB extender cable and, unusually, an A/V breakout cable that plugs in to a mini-USB socket on the end of the tuner stick next to the aerial jack. S-video, RCA phono and 3mm stereo-jack sockets on the breakout allow for external audio and video inputs.

The main viewing application is Cyberlink Power Cinema 4, a home-theatre application. When first run it displays a full-screen splash, inviting you to optimise your PC for multimedia use without explaining what will happen to your PC if you accept.

If you do accept, there are entries for screen aspect ratio, number of loudspeakers, country, type of TV tuner and scan options. From then on Power Cinema operates in full-screen mode by default, with large bold graphics.

There’s a reliance on icon-style controls, and menus are displayed with large web-style buttons, with the picture reduced to picture-in-window when the menu ‘pages’ are selected.

Although the software works well and looks slick, the lack of a simple pulldown menu strip is a bit annoying. You can use the standard window menu bar controls to reduce this display to an overlay window. A separate application must be installed to enable the remote-control function.

Although it is one of the most expensive products in this group test, the Terratec CinergyT USB XS has a lot of useful features. Despite the suggest retail price being £89, we found it for around £65 when we did a Best Prices search.

This article is part of a group test of miniature USB TV tuners. Others are:
Intro and Editor's choice
Freecom DVB-T USB Stick
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 900
KWorld DVBT-350U
MSI Mega Sky 580
Pinnacle PCTV USB Stick
Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS