Verdict: Precious metal for MCE, but fool's gold for Windows XP

The GDI Black Gold was one of the first digital TV tuners to hit the market, and one of the first to offer MCE drivers to the public, even before the 2005 version arrived. The Black Gold is still primarily aimed at the MCE market, but it can also be purchased for regular Windows XP.

With MCE, the Black Gold has a proven track record, with years of support. As a result, this was the card supplied with Quiet PC's excellent D.Vine Media Center kit. You can fit two cards in an MCE system to enable the recording of two programmes at once, although the S-Video inputs are disabled by MCE.

As a standalone product, the principal interface is the Black Gold TV application. This looks a bit rudimentary compared with the software supplied with other cards this month, but it has all the necessary features built in. Although you can operate a fair amount of these features using the supplied IR remote, the Black Gold app isn't entirely remote-friendly, although it's readable from a distance when maximised.

The built-in EPG looks similarly basic, with channels on the left, a text-based full day's listing on the right, and buttons to go forwards and backwards 24 hours. However, at least it gives you one-click scheduling of recordings. Watching these is performed using Windows Media Player, though, rather than the Black Gold app itself, which makes it less sofa-friendly than other tuners. A new version of the Black Gold app was imminent at the time of writing, with a number of improved features, including support for dual tuners, the ability to preview all channels in a multiplex at once and a better-looking EPG.

Although the Black Gold isn't as polished as it could be, it's still a dependable choice if you're building a Windows XP MCE 2005 PC. Its popularity is testament to its compatibility with Microsoft's quirky media OS. GTA also offers a bundle of two cards plus the MCE drivers for £106.20 inc VAT, which saves around £15. So if your media PC does have two PCI slots available, the Black Gold still makes a cost-effective route to dual tuners in MCE.

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