Dongle泛指任何能插到電腦上的小型硬體，PC TV dongle則是用來在PC上觀看電視節目所用的擴充裝置。一般來說，依照採用的電視訊號規格，PC TV dongle可區分成兩大類：若使用的訊源為數位訊號，則屬於數位PC TV dongle；若使用的是類比訊號，則屬於類比PC TV dongle。全球各地皆有不同的採納階段，且推行的廣播標準也不盡相同。
A complete design for a data acquisition card for the IBM PC is detailed in this application note. Additionally, C language code is provided to allow sampling of data at speed of more than 20kHz. The speed limitation is strictly based on the execution speed of the "C" data acquisition loop. A "Turbo" XT can acquire data at speeds greater than 20kHz. Machines with 80286 and 80386 processors can go faster than 20kHz. The computer that was used as a test bed in this application was an XT running at 4.77MHz and therefore all system timing and acquisition time measurements are based on a 4.77MHz clock speed.
