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9. DVICO Fusion 5 HDTV Tuner or VBOX Cat's Eye ($100 to 150)
For the PC gamer who has everything, consider a PCI HDTV tuner upgrade. Most major metropolitan cities and suburbs in the United States now receive free high-definition broadcasts from NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, the WB, and even PBS. What's nice about the PC HDTV solution is that you can record free off-the-air movies. Once you use your GeForce or Radeon to transmit the image to your regular TV, you now have a TIVO that does high-definition without any subscription fees. Since many movies are broadcast in 5.1 surround sound, you actually have an opportunity to record "better than DVD" quality movies provided that you're willing to fast forward through the commercials.



The ATI HDTV Wonder is the easiest HDTV tuner to find in retail stores, however ATI's Multimedia Center software is not known for its reliability. This won't be a problem with 3rd-party tools such as WatchHDTV or if the HDTV Wonder is being installed into a Windows Media Center Edition PC. While it's virtually impossible to find a DVICO FusionHDTV or the Vbox Cat's Eye in stores, we recommend retailers such as www.pcalchemy.com who have the units in stock.

As you recall, PC Alchemy is one of the best retailers for home-theater PC equipment. They have a wider selection than Newegg, more competitive pricing than Newegg for many items, and even have a perfect 10.0 on ResellerRatings.com.

Between the two HDTV tuners, in general, the DVICO is considered to offer better hardware with the ability to deal with multipath broadcast signals whereas the Vbox has better drivers making it easier to install and maintain.