It's amazing how TV tuners have advanced in the last year. You used to have to have a spare PCI slot and plug in a large card with a square tin can soldered to its side. If you wanted two tuners, so you could record one channel while viewing another, you needed two slots, two cards and two tin cans.

The latest Pinnacle PCTV device is no bigger than a typical USB drive, yet the Dual DVB-T Diversity Stick contains twin digital TV tuners - in layman's terms Freeview tuners - and twin mini-rod aerials to help improve reception, so Pinnacle claims. It only takes one USB socket and has a standard coaxial connector and a secondary, mini aerial feed on its other end.

Unusually, you install the Diversity Stick by plugging it into a USB socket on a desktop PC, or more usually a laptop, before installing the software. You then cancel the Windows installation wizard and install the PCTV software, which provides either a windowed TV display or a full screen one under Windows XP or Vista. The product is also fully compatible with Windows Media Center under both operating systems, though only the 32-bit versions.

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With twin tuners built into the stick, you can watch, record and time-shift one or two channels at once. There's an electronic programme guide (EPG), which is pretty good at listing programme details on a per-channel basis, but doesn't offer the kind of spreadsheet view that Media Center does, which easily compares what's being broadcast on all channels at a given time.

As well as the PCTV application, Pinnacle bundles a copy of Studio version 10 QuickStart, giving you the ability to edit video recordings made from live TV or your own digital videos. While it's not a full version of the software, it has most of the essentials and is more than adequate for simple edits.

We can't comment on the improved reception of the Diversity Stick. Although our ground-floor lab is in an area which receives digital TV with a good signal, that's from a roof aerial. Using the twin mini-rod aerials, which come with both magnetic and suction cup bases, we couldn't get a strong enough signal to return any stations on scanning, even with the aerials on a window sill. This implies you'll still need a reasonable signal level to be able to get the Diversity Stick to work, twin feeds or no.

If you need a TV card to carry with you when travelling to connect into a notebook, the PCTV Dual DVB-T Diversity Stick has all the bells and whistles you're likely to need. It still requires a decent signal level to work adequately from its twin aerials, but we're willing to accept it could more receptive than a similar device with a single aerial feed.