Freecom DVB-T USB stick DVB terrestrial receiver / radio input adapter

I got one of these to add extra digital services to my household on my PC as I thought it would be good to watch a bit of TV whilst doing some Uni work or general web browsing, the price was excellent and the unit is quite a lot smaller than other digi boxes or TV boxes for the PC so that was a plus.

Initial installation wasn't too difficult, install the drivers, plug in the stick and the PC does the rest for you. However, the supplied software leaves much to be desired, it is rather slow, hard to navigate and switching between channels seems to take a while - plus it uses a lot of computer resources so the picture quality isn't very good.

The supplied aerial, although nice and compact, really serves no purpose unless you have the television transmitter practically in your back garden! I don't live too far away and it managed to pick up very minimal channels - only the very strong channels. So I bought an extension and coax aerial splitter to bring the main exterior aerial into the spare room - however the TV stick still had trouble finding the same channels as the digi box in the main lounge. I think the signal might be significantly improved when the digital switchover has gone through completely (although that's not until 2009!)

Freecom have released DVB drivers to allow you to use the TV stick with 3rd party software (i.e. freeware or Microsoft Media Centre) which does allow you to use the stick with more user-friendly software but does involve a bit of faffing uninstalling the old drivers and getting the new universal ones.

Overall though, not a bad little device for around £30, although you do need to be in a strong signal area and would benefit from using windows media centre as opposed to the supplied software.