BIOS: Technology Means Business

Terratec's latest computer peripheral is no larger than a Swiss Army knife or a memory stick, yet it provides mobile analogue and digital television. An ideal product for frequent travellers, or those who prefer to use a laptop, the Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS is an ultra-compact (80x30x15mm) tuner that turns any USB-equipped computer into a TV via a regular house antenna or analogue cable connection. You even get a 48-button remote control and compact DVB-T aerial, so you're ready to sit back and enjoy TV and radio on your computer out of the box. Its hardware features are relatively limited, such as the lack of a Dolby Digital audio decoder and no digital video inputs or video outputs, but it's great if you're looking for a highly portable USB solution to turn your laptop into a Media Center PC.

Pros: Tiny; USB powered; aerial and remote; excellent software
Cons: Pricey; basic inputs/outputs and audio features

In addition to serving as a regular analogue or digital TV, the Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS can be used as a digital video recorder with full MPEG-2 support for recording analogue and digital terrestrial television signals. The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) lets you navigate through the large number of stations and activate a recording timer to save TV broadcasts to your hard disk drive.

Freeview support also means you can access over 16 channels compared to the standard five channels. While Freeview coverage is growing, it's not available nationwide just yet, so it's worth bearing in mind before you opt for a package of this type.

The integrated videotext provides news and information beyond TV program schedules, you can playback photos, movies and audio files (WMA, WAV and MP3) stored on your hard disk, and you can burn recorded programmes to CD or DVD. The Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS is also equipped with inputs that accept analogue video and audio signals, allowing you to import analogue videos from analogue camcorders and video recorders. A multi-program preview function is available to scan all programs currently on air.

Terratec's engineers have done a great job to cram a full digital TV tuner into such a small package, but the glue that holds the whole package together is Cyberlink's excellent PowerCinema 4 and MakeDVD 2 multimedia applications. The former looks and feels just like a Media Center PC, allowing you to watch TV, record your favourite programs to your PC, and time-shift through TV commercials using the supplied infrared remote control.

The software also lets you fast-forward programs with undistorted audio, preview 12 stations at a time, quickly search for your favourite TV channels, edit recorded programs, and burn video to a CD or DVD.

MakeDVD 2 is an equally easy-to-use program that works seamlessly with PowerCinema 4. The application enables the burning of photos, videos and music to CD or DVD - all via the same remote control. MakeDVD is also designed to work as a standalone program, complementing other digital home software such as Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition.

The Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS, like a lot of USB TV tuners, is not without its limitations. In particular, there's no built-in Dolby Digital audio decoder (AC3) or subtitling teletext, six-channel audio output is not supported, and you can't scan for scrambled programs. There's no digital video inputs or video outputs, so you can't record from DV camcorders or route video and sound to external A/V devices, and there's no support for PIP (Picture In Picture) and POP (Picture out of Picture) modes.

All things considered, the Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS is definitely one of the best products of its type if you're looking for a highly portable USB solution to turn your laptop into a Media Center PC - especially as it comes with £85 worth of excellent software. Its only limitations are in terms of audio and video input/output support. [8]