While TV tuners for Windows are 10 a penny, the same for Macs can be rarer than do-do from a constipated rocking horse that's just swallowed a whole packet of Imodium. Thankfully Pinnacle has managed to make a TV tuner that not only works for Macs but also does a decent job of turning your highly desirable Apple hardware into a highly desirable telly.

The Pinnacle hybrid TV tuner for Macs is tiny device that fits into any available USB port on your Apple personal computer. Installation is as simple as plugging it into a free port on the back of an iMac. The other end is where the aerial goes in.

The device will happily accept a normal co-ax plug so you don't have to scout around to find an adapter. Now at this point most people will say that the aerial supplied may as well be thrown away as they tend to be next to useless. But in our tests we found quite the opposite (we'll come to that bit later).

The software supplied with the tuner is Eye TV lite, which is a very basic PVR application. While it gets you going in as far as watching telly is concerned, that's about it.

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