Watching TV on your television – never mind your home PC – is not always the most convenient thing to do. Imagine, then, being able to take the signal from your PC’s TV tuner, and stream it across your home network to just about any other device: PC, Mac, DLNA-compatible device and even your mobile phone or tablet too.

This is precisely what DVBLink Connect! Server is designed to do. You first configure your PC and TV tuner card using DVBLink TVSource, and then marry it up to Windows Media Center. This is by far the trickiest part of the whole equation. Once done, just download and install the requisite app for your mobile device, enter your server PC’s IP address plus the username and password you use to configure TVSource in the first place (the default is ‘user’ and ‘admin’) and then all being well you should connect successfully.

Your mobile app allows you to browse an EPG looking for content to watch – either click on a channel name to watch the current show, or click a future programme to instruct your server PC to record it in Windows Media Center. You can also set up manual recordings from the Recordings button.

Use the Settings tab to make changes to your server – you may want to configure it to allow you access over the internet for example – or switch channel order from alphabetical to numbering. You can also manually set the video quality settings, in case the signal breaks up too much due to a marginal connection.

It’s all very simple to use and easy to set up – you have to pay a one-off fee of around €37 plus tax for the PC software after the 20-day trial period has passed, but the mobile apps themselves are completely free. Note DVBLink works with selected digital satellite, cable and terrestrial (DVB-T/T2 and ATSC) tuners.