Something strange happened when I received the Hauppauge Win TV Primio FM package. I actually read the manual!

To my surprise it was, as manuals go, easy to read and only took me an hour and a half to go from cover to cover. I can hear you all saying 'Come on! Get a life!' 'What and anorak'. Well that's as maybe but for the first time in a long time reading a manual did help me understand the workings of this product, what it offered and the installation process that lay ahead. I started my task with no preconceptions and no fear!

The installation was straight forward, both hardware and software installations were uneventful. Before I knew it I was ready to scan the airwaves for a feast of television viewing!

Just allow me to backtrack a little, as I would like to explain the install process briefly. The package includes a PCI Card, a cable to connect to your sound card, a remote control transmitter and receiver, an FM radio Aerial, a CD with drivers, and software applications, plus of course the manuals and documentation. After inserting the card into a spare PCI slot, plug in the TV and FM Aerials, the external jack lead to the sound card Line-In socket and the remote control receiver. This took me all of 5 minutes to accomplish.

The software install is shown in detailed screen shots in the manual and was adhered to exactly as per all of the illustrations in the manual. Easy! This took another 5 minutes.

Beware! Don't try and use an internal television Aerial as I did, you will pick up very few channels, if any, and what you do get is of very poor quality. The scanning process is automatically initiated on installation but presented me with no challenges when looking at the available menu options to re-run it with an external TV aerial. The scan found various channels and names them generically. It was a simple operation to rename them once I had identified what I was viewing.

The software has loads of nice features such as freeze frame, video capture, full screen TV, Teletext and a link to the radio interface.

Ports on the Win TV card include TV and FM aerial sockets, Audio Line in and out, video in, and the remote control receiver jack. The Video In and line In allow you to connect to a video or camcorder. The capture of video clips does of course gobble up hard disk space so beware. Having said that, great fun was had gathering video images and editing them. Editing software is not included with the Win TV package.

The software supplied gives, not only TV access, but also a fully specified radio and Teletext functionality.

Teletext worked well and with DDE support one can pass Teletext pages to Microsoft Word or Excel plus many other applications. This is achieved using either a cut and paste operation or via copy menu selections.

The Win TV Radio has tune, seek, mute, scan, presets etc. etc. Everything your car radio has apart from automatic traffic news interrupting you every 20 seconds. I enjoyed programming my favorite radio channels into the presets. Then I drove the folks in our Labs mad while I kept flicking from one channel to another not pausing for any longer than 10 seconds.

Overall I found the Win TV easy to install and easy to use. So easy in-fact, that I won't easily give it up.

Picture quality was good but this is of course dependent on your location and the type of Aerial you use.

A couple of negatives now! Firstly I would have liked to have had some explanation in the manual regarding the TV transmission types used in the UK which would help the uninitiated scan for the available TV channels without having to try various options. Secondly the inclusion of some video editing software would be nice, even Lite or evaluation versions maybe.

If you need, like me, to have the radio or TV on whilst you work then this product is going to be your best friend. If the kids want a TV, Radio and PC all in one small room then buy the Win TV Primio FM. If Teletext information is your need then buy this product now. If you just fancy the idea of making your PC multi-functional then go get a Win TV Primio FM.