When you say the Plextor name you immediately associate it with optical drives, CD and DVD burners, they have some special models which are impressive in the number of features and, not to forget, acquisition price. Their fame as having great products is brought down by the pursuit of smaller prices and the choice of quantity, instead of quality.

One of the reasons they chose to expand their line of products is to try to reach a larger number of consumers by introducing different products for just as many needs. From their recent novelties there is the PX-HDTV500U, a mini digital HDTV receiver. It is a very small and light (less than 20 grams) USB-based device which allows users to watch and record HDTV "on most Windows-based laptop computers." I, for one, believe that you can also place it on your desktop, but it kinda defies the purpose for which it was built.

The reason for which it works on "most" computers stands in the minimum hardware requirements it has. For Standard Definition TV, it requires running on a Windows 2000/XP/Vista-based computer, an Intel Pentium III at 1.0 GHz or equivalent CPU, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB VGA card, sound card or on-board sound chip, and USB 2.0. Nothing too bad so far, but it is a HDTV receiver, so for this it requires an Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz or equivalent CPU, 512 MB RAM, and 128 MB VGA card.

Michael Arbisi, vice president of channel sales for Plextor said: "We spent a significant amount of time developing an intuitive user interface that makes it easy for users to get started enjoying this very cool and useful mini HDTV receiver immediately. This new product is actually highly complimentary with other Plextor products that our customers may already own and use every day. For example, once a series of shows has been recorded from the HDTV receiver onto a laptop's hard drive, a user may want to burn them onto a DVD using one of our DVD recorders."

There is software included in the package, it scans for free air-to-air digital and HD signals on a 42-864 MHz frequency, with a 6 Mhz bandwidth. It also supports the US DTV Standard ATSC Protocol, picture-in-picture, automatic channel scanning, still-picture capture and 4:3 and 16:9 viewing ratios. It also allows for real-time storing of recordings in MPEG-2 format on the hard drive. The price tag for this little beauty is of $99 (MSRP) and availability will begin from April 2007.