One of the most attractive features in a media centre PC is the ability to watch, time-shift and record live television. To do this properly and in particular to record one channel while watching another, you need two TV tuners.

Until recently you had to fill two PCI slots - and make sure the tuners you used were of a type that would work in a dual configuration. In the last few months, though, dual-tuner cards have started to arrive and the snappily-named PCTV Dual DVB-T Pro PCI card is Pinnacle's first dual-tuner offering that supports DVB-T, more popularly known as Freeview.

It's a very neat little card, with none of the metal-caged lumps seen on previous TV tuners. It plugs into a single PCI slot and the only connections on the back panel are a coaxial TV aerial socket and a miniature jack for the remote control receiver. The remote control, supplied in the box, works with Pinnacle's own Media Center software, but not with Windows Media Center Edition (MCE).

This is a shame, as the product carries the 'Designed for Windows Media Center Edition' logo and the card itself works a treat with Microsoft's own easy-to-use front-end. Anyone who has used Windows MCE will be a little disappointed with Pinnacle's Media Centre 4 software. Although it performs most of the functions of the Microsoft product, it's less well designed and feels a lot more clunky.

Working through from the main menu, you can select to watch TV, play a DVD, listen to Internet radio, view a slideshow of your photos or sit back and listen to any item from your music collection. It has little of the style of MCE, though: none of the explosion and implosion effects as new screens come into view, or the scrolling selection menus that help you navigate easily.

For all that, the Pinnacle product has a couple of extras that may endear it to you. It can record to MPEG 4 for use on PlayStation portable or iPod players, and in MPEG 2 or DivX format for PC video. Pausing live TV all works seamlessly, with the programme automatically routing to your hard drive, where you can pick up again exactly where you left off.

Pinnacle also bundles a copy of Studio QuickStart, a cut-down version of its market leading video editing software. It has plenty of useful functionality in it, though, and is great for simple home video editing.

If you want to add most of the Windows MCE features to a PC running the basic Windows XP, without the expense of upgrading the operating system, then this package offers all the software and hardware necessary to add the TV and recording components. It's a shame the remote control doesn't work with Windows MCE, as you will have to buy a genuine Microsoft remote - another £25 - to use the card with it.