Being USB the Freecom DVB-T (digital receiver) will work comfortably on both a Laptop and Desktop PC. The package comes with an external antenna, USB extension cable, remote control and ArcSofts Total Media software.

What's interesting about the USB adaptor is the supplied attachment, that allows you to plug in a fixed antenna from your roof - if needs be - though we found the supplied small antenna surprisingly capable of picking up channels.

Installation as you would expect is fairly straight forward but we recommend for desktop PC's that you use the supplied USB extension cable to attach the unit to the back of your PC - mainly to allow the receiver to pick up signals and for use of your remote control

Next it was a case of installing ArcSofts Total Media software which not only has TV capabilities it can also be used as a media player for music, videos and photos.

Heading to the settings option allows you to scan for channels automatically, on our first go it managed to pick up a total of 47 channels but adjusting the antenna and attaching the USB extension cable allowed us then to pick up 67 channels, i.e E4, ITV3 to TMF and the Hits. You can also scan frequencies for other countries supporting the DVB-T standard - which expands its potential.

The Arcsoft software does come with a lot of features but it does lack a few that would make the program complete, for example though it can scan the channels and you can rename them, you can’t seem to change the channel id position, so channel 5 appears as channel 9. Secondly you can adjust the window size of the TV picture to some extent but we could not seem to get the picture to stay at the top of the screen which meant we could not watch the screen during typing in Microsoft Word say.

These are a few small niggles but you do get used to the way the software works and its failings are ignored by some of the cool features. One of the best is the ability to record and pause live TV, so if you were watching a program and needed to nip to the lav you could do so and then continue watching the program when you got back.

It's also nuts being able to rewind Live TV back and all this is possible thanks to the TV content being recorded to your hard drive - so a fast PC is needed (our Test PC seemed to cope so you can use this an example).

You can also use Total Media to see TV listings and schedule recordings of your programs and even take snap shots or recordings of TV images/video footage for viewing back later on.

We found the image quality to be fine on our LG 18" TFT with 1280 x 1024 res - even in full screen - but the image quality is dependant on signal strength and you monitor. The card is HDTV ready which will be cool when they start sending HD down freeview channels.

On the subject of signal strength we were quite impressed that the small antenna could get - at times - really good signal strength, this is primarily down to the fact that you can stick the antenna to your window with the supplied suction cup that has a magnet to hold the antenna down. But it is a case of experimenting a lot at first, because the position of the antenna seems to produce better results for certain channels depending on where it’s positioned.

We also found that switching between channels takes a while for the picture to appear depending on if the channel is next to each other, for example selecting channel 1 and then 2 seemed to be quicker than flicking from channel 1 to 32.

This could be down to our Test PC as we found that heavy Windows use seems to affect the signal at times - when the ArcSoft window was minimised - prob due to the live recording setting which utilises our hard disk.

You also get stereo sound if the channel supports it and we happily had channels like the 'Hits' minimised whilst we were working and the quality through headphones and main speakers was great.

The supplied remote control was both helpful and a hindrance, the infra red range was pretty poor and you had to push quite hard on the button at times to get a channel to change. Even so it was handy to allow us to turn the unit on and off and to switch into full screen when we needed to.