We're coming to the end of an era as the Government gets ready, in a few years' time, to pull the plug on analogue TV and radio. In their place we'll have newer, shinier, digital versions. In the case of radio the BBC has pioneered DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting). There's a load of information about DAB here and also here, including a map that shows DAB coverage throughout the UK.

The gist of DAB is relatively simple - it's a digital audio signal sent via radio waves. Or, if you want to be technical about it, the frequency range between 217.5MHz and 230.0MHz has been split up into seven multiplexes. Radio signals are encoded using MPEG to compress the signal and then a second technology, COFDM (Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) ensures that the radio signal is received correctly. The combination of those two technologies means that a number of signals can be transmitted in the same multiplex frequency without interference. End of technical bit.

You need a digital tuner to receive DAB, but in principle a digital radio is the same as a traditional radio. It has an aerial, electronics and a speaker and could be portable or a hi-fi style tuner.

Or there's a third option. Modular Technology has launched the DAB PCI radio card that goes inside your PC like any other PCI expansion card. That means it uses your PC's sound system and you can also record radio programmes directly to your hard drive.

The DAB card has an external aerial that looks like the type of mobile phone aerial you would mount on the roof of a car. It connects via a thin cable that is a couple of metres in length so positioning it is easy.

It's quite simple to install the software supplied with the radio card and then it's time to scan the airwaves and see which radio stations are within range. In our testing we were rather surprised to find a selection of bangin' and chillin' dance stations but no national BBC stations. We read the 'readme.txt' file, which told us how to edit the text file that controls which frequencies are scanned. That only took a few seconds and then we rescanned and found every station we were interested in.

The controlling software is intuitive and easy to use and the sound quality is similar to a high quality streaming format such as Real, and is perfectly acceptable for every day use.

This is an interesting product. The sound quality is good and doesn't fade in or out or break up, and there are plenty of stations already live with more to follow. On the other hand it seems quite expensive. You can buy a portable DAB radio for the same price or a digital hi-fi tuner for about £150.