(FORTUNE Magazine) – It's late, and I'm trying to get some work done, but the Orioles are locked in extra innings with Toronto. I can hear the broadcast of the game just behind the screen of my word processor. With one out and a man on third, I give up on the work and reach for the mouse. One click and a live TV picture from Camden Yards pops up in the corner of my monitor. Another click and the game fills my screen, just in time for me to watch the Birds leave Cal Ripken stranded. Disgusted, I start surfing--HBO, TNT, CNN, ESPN, A&E--but there's nothing on. Time to get back to work.

Welcome to the world of convergence--a buzzword for the blending of computers, video, and other electronic media on your desktop. I'm investigating the phenomenon with some very cool hardware and software--the ATI All-in-Wonder Pro, a video card with a built-in TV tuner that plugs into my computer, and WebTV for Windows, a little-known component of Windows 98 that threatens to turn workaholics into couch potatoes.

The $300 All-in-Wonder Pro truly does live up to its name. Equipped with a 3-D video accelerator to make gamers happy, the All-in-Wonder's TV tuner taps into your cable feed or TV antenna via a connector, and into your TV set, VCR, or camcorder with a bundle of weird wires and adapters. Connecting the stuff is a pain, but once you've replaced your old video adapter with the All-in-Wonder, ATI's slick software gloms on to the tuner and puts a TV screen on your monitor. You can change channels with your mouse and adjust the size and location of the TV window, along with brightness, contrast, color balance, and volume. (If you get bored channel surfing, you can save TV clips on your hard disk.) The TV image is surprisingly crisp and detailed at almost every size, without the scan lines you see on a normal television screen. If you have a good sound card and speakers, you'll be amazed at the clarity of the audio too.

Microsoft's tuner software, called WebTV, can't compare with ATI's in features, but it does have one great advantage--you can use it to download your local cable listings from Microsoft's Website. That done, WebTV displays the schedule (complete with capsule movie reviews) on the left side of your screen and a small preview window on the right. Just click on a listing to preview the program; if you like what you see, click again to make it full size. Very clever.

The downside was the six hours it took me to get it working. I just couldn't get WebTV and ATI's video player to co-exist. By the time you read this, ATI should have Windows 98 software to remedy the problem, but video cards with the old software will still be on the shelves for months.

So what's the verdict? Well, I enjoy playing with new toys, and for folks who monitor CNN or Bloomberg for news, a PC tuner might be a useful tool. But unless you're a gadget freak or you want to edit video on your PC, you'll do just fine with a plain old TV set. For the time being, TV on the PC still seems a cool technology in search of a true purpose. For information on ATI video cards, surf to www.atitech.com, or call 905-882-2600.