A vision in white: Miglia TVMini

By on 10 October 2005, 12:57pm

If, as the electronic prophet in David Cronenberg's Videodrome says, "television is the retina of the mind's eye", then this USB-based TV makes the horror pocketable. We've seen small digital TV boxes before, but this is obscene. Not much bigger than a USB key, but capable of tuning into every digital terrestrial channel going, the Miglia TVMini is the very definition of Voodoo.

It's Mac-only, so installing the software involved a simple drag-and-drop operation -- seconds later and you're watching 40 channels on your iBook or Power Mac. Built-in PVR (personal video recorder) functionality means you can pause, rewind and skip through television broadcasts -- there's also an online TV guide that lets you schedule recordings with deft clicks. So, how's the picture quality on this £150 trinket?

Given the aerial's tiny size, it's pretty impressive, especially considering we tested it with a stock LCD screen -- no high response time here to mask the inadequacies of digital TV. Compared to many Freeview boxes we've seen built in to LCD TVs, the results we got with the TVMini were excellent. Reception was perfect and there weren't any nasty compression artefacts around regions of high contrast -- and you know how much we hate the jaggies.

Combine the TVMini with a Mac Mini and you might just have the world's smallest and quietest PVR solution. Let us know what soldered-together contraption you use as your PVR. -CS