A generous bundle greets anyone who forks out for AOpen's XRecorder. Billed as the 'tape terminator', the pack includes plenty of leads, special editions of Ulead's PhotoImpact 7 and VideoStudio 7, the same company's Video@Home and a remote control. At the heart of it all is the VX2000, a box of tricks that's designed to be your own media centre.

Throw all this together and you have a package that's capable of capturing video, facilitating a dash of telly watching, digital recording, supporting cable TV input and taking a feed from a DVD or video source. This is all controllable via a decent enough remote control, and once you've done the initial setup work, there's little reason to do anything but leave the VX2000 to its work.

There are several major marks in the plus column here and we've alluded to the first just now. Frankly, it's very easy to get up and running. You install the software, hook the device up to an available USB 2.0 port (USB 1.1 is supported, but not advisable if video capture is on your agenda) and switch on.

The software defaulted to USA settings on our test unit, but that's very simple to rectify. You then connect up your video source, the VX2000 picks it up, and your efforts pretty much peak at that point.

It's a very satisfying marriage. The combination of software fits well and the hardware itself can handle a lot. It comes with connectors for S-Video, AV, Firewire/IEEE1394 and television antenna (supporting up to 158 channels), with all but the latter neatly arranged on the front of the stylish unit (the antenna port sits at the back).

The various aforementioned software applications can control recording from your video input as required. If it's just playback you're after, then as you'd expect you have flexibility over the sizing of the viewing windows and the option to switch to full screen.

While our impressions of the XRecorder package are predominantly positive, there are a couple of niggles. First, the hardware is a little noisier than we'd like in operation. Nothing off-putting, but for those looking to set up a quiet home entertainment PC it could be a consideration.

Then there are a couple of omissions, with the lack of Teletext and radio support disappointing. However, credit to AOpen for providing a package that unifies many video-related features and makes them swimmingly easy to use.

While lacking the depth, perhaps, of some of its competitors, the XRecorder is attractive, useful and easy to use. There are more cost-effective solutions on the market, but nonetheless we found this to be a good all-round package.