Compro Videomate T750

TV on your PC and its other monitor, or into Media Centre, or into XviD, or into...

The Compro T750 Dual PCI DVB-T and analogue TV/FM tuner card (say that three times fast) packs quite a lot of connections on its PCB, featuring a DVB-T input, TV input, FM antenna, S-Video in and Composite in for all your TV viewing and recording needs. A remote is also included for those who like to sit at a distance.

One of the niftier features is the ability to power up your PC via remote. This requires you to re-route the Power SW cable to the T750 and another supplied cable from the T750 to the motherboard header.

What’s even funkier is if you set it up correctly, this gives the T750 the ability to boot up your PC and start a scheduled recording, as well as shut down your PC once the recording has finished.

The bundled ComproDTV 3 software is minimalist in its design, with the main channel, volume and recording all on the main interface, while the rest of the options are sneakily hidden away for you to pop open. FM tuner software and DVD viewing software are also included.

If you don’t like missing out on any of the action, ComproDTV 3 allows you to view five different channels at once, either as Picture In Picture or in a preview frame outside the main screen (called aptly enough Picture Out Picture). We’re still trying to think of a situation when you would use this feature, but if you need it, it’s there. Alternatively, for those under Microsoft’s dominion the card is completely MCE2005 compatible.

Out of the box, the T750 supports video recording in MPEG2 and MPEG4 formats, and audio recording in MP3 and PCM formats, amongst a selection of other formats. However, once you install the appropriate codecs, the full potential of this TV tuner is unleashed as you are able to record video in DivX and XviD, and audio in OGG and 3vix D4.

The T750 is a fully featured TV tuner that comes with everything you need for an affordable price. About the only weakness is the lack of future proofing by not making it a PCI-E part – but PCI isn’t dead yet, so if the Videomate fits your needs, you know what to do.