Although similar products have been available (with much controversy) in the US for a few years, the Samsung DVD-H40A is the first Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to reach our sunny shores.

Leadtek's WinFast PVR 2000 is one of the two analog TV tuners we've looked at, but while it lacks Compro's power-on functionality it makes up for it with DirectBurn (the ability to burn recorded programs direct to CD or DVD) and an FM tuner.

For those with deep pockets and big hearts, this DVD recorder comes with full PVR functionality and an 80GB hard drive.

There’s only so many times I can herald the coming switch from analog TV broadcasts to digital, so I’ll just dig straight into this impressive digital television card.

While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.

The USB Nebula DigiTV box has the best tuning abilities of the external devices tested, and it has some basic but good software to go with it.

The small USB S-Media MediaMate 210D is a fairly hardy TV tuner, with some basic software but enough to get the job done.

Digital radio in Australia is a slow burner. While many people are investing in digital set-top boxes and digital displays for the purpose of watching digital TV, not too many people are jumping on the digital radio bandwagon.

Will home media centres do to the entertainment industry what video did to the radio star? With new technology reshaping our lounges, homes could soon become fully functional media hubs.