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. Firstly it has a low rise, making it perfect for small form-factor PCs plus it’s high definition (HD) capable (both displaying and recording).Under test again we have to say that although the HD streams looked fantastic, you still need to couple this card with a reasonably good antenna to be able to suck in the whole broadcast. The standard definition (SD) stuff is still great however, and looks fantastic on this. Digital TV on the PC is no longer new, and neither is the excellent PVR functionality that comes standard these days with DTV tuners, but even though PVR functions are common they make all the difference.

Recording, pausing live TV, skipping forward and back in time while live broadcasts are still being captured – it’s what makes DTV on the PC worthwhile.

The Ultraview HDTV card supports all PVR functionality, and can also capture two streams at once – although this isn’t what it seems. It means you can capture two streams for the same carrier at once, say a HD and an SD stream of channel Ten.

Not too sure of the use of this, unless you use it for ABC and ABC 2 (two distinct programming schedules from the same carrier). Since concurrent programming hasn’t yet fully taken off (the ABC’s a forerunner), this is more a future-proofing of the card. Another excellent addition is the S-Video and composite video inputs, which allows for the card to be used as a video capture device and with the bundled software (Ulead VideoStudio 7) you can burn home videos to DVD.

The control software is simple to grasp and easy to use with a distinct soft-DVD player interface, and the whole thing can be operated from afar via the USB IR remote.