What’s the difference between all the new gadgets that allow you to watch TV without actually being glued to your TV?

A huge range of products claim to be “The Future of Television”, by blurring the dividing line between the telly and the computer. In fact, with the imminent release of the Meivo – a high-spec Windows PC built into a 22″ LCD television – that line will disappear altogether. As Richard Heawood notes in an email, “The idea of using a computer as a ‘media centre’ just doesn’t seem as ridiculously futuristic as it did 18 months ago.”

So, assuming you have a TV in one room, and a computer in another, how would such a media centre bolt together? First are the devices that plug into your computer’s USB port and act as a mini Freeview box, receiving the 70-plus digital terrestrial channels. Made by companies such as Miglia for the Mac, and Pinnacle for the PC, they come with software which allows you to record broadcasts to your hard disk for watching later – effectively turning your computer into a PVR (personal video recorder), the successor to the humble VCR. Then come the “media extenders”, such as the SageTV Media Extender or the new AppleTV. These sit under your television, feeding it a video signal that’s being received wirelessly from your computer – either, say, a Freeview broadcast, or a pre-recorded file being played back. Judging by this week’s email inbox, the AppleTV hasn’t met with universal approval: Sean McGrath comments that his old XBox gaming console, running the XBox Media Center software, “can already play videos from across a home network – and deal with many more video formats that the Apple box can,” while Jeff Plummer notes that an old laptop, plugged directly into a TV, already makes a more versatile and capable unit for storing and playing video.

Lastly are the “placeshifters”, which intercept a video signal in your home – say, from a set-top box – and wirelessly send it to another device. This could be a Windows laptop hooked up to the internet a hotel in another country, an iMac in your bedroom, or even an internet-enabled mobile phone. The highly-regarded Slingbox, made by Slingmedia, comes top of the pack; a bittersweet test run over the Easter weekend saw me watching England cricket team slump horribly – but with crystal clarity – on my Nokia N73 phone, while sitting in the sunshine in Hendon Park.

One day, all these gizmos which perform distinct functions will all be rolled up into one astonishing überdevice; at which point your only worry will be finding time to watch the staggering amount of video material you’ve amassed.