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Great sporting events, such as this June's World Cup, are viewed the world over as an incredible opportunity for success and I’m not just talking about the players. Anyone who sells just about anything is trying to flog products off the back on the world’s most watch sporting event. Let’s fact it, with a total audience of 30 million viewers for the 2002 World Cup, they’d be foolish not to.

Tech companies are no different. The TV Tuner guys in particular have been keen to tout their ability to let you, “Watch the World Cup on the move!”

Let’s be clear though, in the UK, that’s likely to be nonsense. The UK may have been one of the first to offer terrestrial digital TV signals but the signal strength is one of the worst as many who first signed up to the ill fated ‘OnDigital’ service will no doubt recall. This means that you’re highly unlikely to be, ‘on the move’ when you watch with one of these tuners. You might be using a notebook, but it’ll almost certainly be tethered to a roof aerial rather than the mini aerials that are provided with these products. It might be different if you're using them to watch the World Cup in Germany, but not in the UK. And if you do get to go over - why not try and get a ticket for an actual game instead? For those of us who aren’t so fortunate, let’s take a closer look at these three products.

To test, I used a system with Windows Media Center 2005 installed. You don’t have to use MCE but it’s the best solution for a media based system. Any tuner that isn’t compatible with MS OS will lose points. Each of these products is compliant - these days you’d be hard pushed to find a TV Tuner product that isn't.

All these products are also touted as being HDTV compatible. Well they might be technically, but again, in the UK, not practically. This is because the UK won’t be seeing any HDTV broadcasts over terrestrial aerials until the bandwidth is made available when the analogue signals are shut down, which won’t be happening until 2013. So don’t hold your breath.

That said the BBC has started a limited trial of HD broadcasts in the London area – and rumour has it, these have been hacked. If true this could cause a sales pike of TV Tuners – at least in the London area….

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