Under normal use, typing the receiver's address into a browser takes you to the password-protected Enigma web-interface. Channels can be remotely selected from here – you can also invoke recording, access EPG info and schedule timer events. But it gets really cool if you have the freely downloadable VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org).

Desktop TV

Click on the 'VLC' button, and the channel starts streaming to a window on your PC. Yes, desktop TV without the hassle of installing a tuner card. Recorded files (which take the form of 'as-broadcast' transport streams) can also be played, in theory, at any rate. Sadly, even the most recent version of VLC didn't seem to support them.

You can, however, download the files to your PC via the web interface and play them from there; transfer via a PC FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client is also allowed. You'll find your recordings in the /media/hdd/movie directory.

These can't be played by VLC Media Player, or the TSplayer application that accompanies some versions of DVBViewer, but the audio and video streams buried within them can be extracted using the ProjectX transport-stream demultiplexer (http://project-x. sourceforge.net).

The results can be remultiplexed with Mplex1.exe (http:// members.aon.at/johann.langhofer/ mplex1.htm) into standard .mpg files that are compatible with most media players and DVD authoring software.

Internet access

Those with IT knowledge should be able to set up a system whereby the Dreambox can be securely accessed from any location in the world with an internet connection.

Such a system may be too slow for reliable 'real-time' streaming of MPEG-2 digital TV content, but you should be able to schedule recordings or (slowly) transfer recordings for playback on the remote PC.

That's an exciting possibility and one that puts networkable Linux receivers like the DM600PVR ahead of the rivals.

Dreambox performance

We judged the DM600PVR to have good sensitivity, presumably thanks to the high-grade ALPS tuner.

It managed to pull in some of the non-UK transponders of the Thors (0.8°W) and Sirus (5°E) with a 1m motorised dish and old 0.8dB LNB, although most of the channels in question were encrypted and thus couldn't be viewed. Searching is reasonably fast, a full search of the Astra 1x cluster clocking in at around five minutes. The user interface and menu system were pleasantly responsive.

Sound quality was excellent but, even with an RGB Scart connection, pictures on a large-screen TV were a tad 'soft'. Finer details of high-quality full-resolution (720 x 576) broadcasts were thus rather subdued, although this property did help to mask artefacts like mosquito noise. Some odd bugs need resolving, most notably the refusal to record certain channels (like the EbS channel on Sirius).

This was accompanied by a receiver crash that necessitated a 'power-cycle'. The unit doesn't run as warm as you'd expect, thanks to the external power supply. Overall, the Dreambox DM600PVR is quite an achievement.