|
PCTV HD Pro Stick
Software reviewed on an Alienware system
Check out Alienware at
www.alienware.com
On a cool factor this ranks up there pretty
high. Being able to watch HD TV on your laptop or computer pretty much
anywhere? Oh yea, I’m there. Pinnacle makes it easy for the most part
with the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick. The little device plugs right in to
your USB 2.0 port and in conjunction with the accompanying software you
will be enjoying some HD or SD TV on your computer. It comes with a TV
tuner, a mini remote control and also a portable telescopic antenna. For
those still living in Analog hell let me give you a fast run down of
High Definition.
High-definition television or HDTV has a
lot of potential in regard to entertainment. It offers very crisp
picture quality, much better than the standard television signals. If
that was not enough, HDTV also can get smoother movement and incredibly
rich colors. There are a few things that can thwart getting the best HD
quality though. The chief of these being lack of HD input. You may be
surprised to find out that many of the cable, satellite and even some of
the so called High Definition channels out there are not broadcast in
true HD. Now the good news is almost all commercially available HD is
digital. Now this does not mean that you won’t get anomalies depending
on the signal. You will get a great picture, some pixilation, or a bunch
of freeze framed pictures or nothing at all. Any kind of interference
just makes the signal unwatchable causing freezing of the picture,
skipping, or just out and out tiled mess.
The Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick is a mixed bag of the good the bad and
the ugly, and I know I say this a lot in my reviews but some of what
your results will be depend on a lot of factors, one of them of course
being what kind of set up you have. We tested the system on three
different rigs all across the board. Results varied slightly from low to
Middle to high end system there where tweaks and some improvements here
and there depending on the system. We tried it out on an
Older Gateway system Pentium 4 Single core processor, 2.40 GHZ machine
with 1 gig of RAM and an NVIDIA Geforce 6800 GT with 256 memory on the
card. On a Dell XPS M1210 Laptop with a middle of the ground Duo Core
1.66 GHZ system, lastly we tested it with the Alienware Area 51 7500
quad core processors with an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS video card.
Surprisingly the test result differences where less than I had
anticipated. The older Gateway struggled a little bit when it came to
some of the TV channels, but we suspect this was due more to the
location of the antenna. The USB device works as it claims, after the
software is installed you are able to receive digital broadcast. The
picture results on each system where comparable to each other, over all
no complaints really. The USB device did get very hot though.
The folks at Pinnacle advised The Pro Stick did not have any issues with
heating up in any of Pinnacle’s testing efforts. Sounded fare enough,
like with any technical piece of equipment there can be some batches
that may have an issue that requires replacement. If you are having an
issue with yours, just check warranty, check any trouble shooting
information for the unit and if all else fails see about getting a
different unit. Pinnacle also suggested advised that there should be no
real limit or over use issues and that the device should have no problem
lasting through the warranty period listed on packaging. Good to know.
While we are testing this on two desk tops and a laptop, the PCTV HD Pro
Stick seems to be targeted at that group of folks like travelers, or
students or other business people that may want a break from the drudge
of the trip, or work and get in some entertainment time. It is an
awesome concept really.
The unit itself and the little antenna do the work they are supposed to
do, and the compact design makes it a snap to carry along on trips and
such. The Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick comes with two disks, which are two
different software programs. One of them runs the TV tuner and the other
manages your recorded TV shows, which is the Studio 10 Quick start which
I really cannot recommend. I have already figured that the studio
software that comes with the unit, and patched to 10.7 has a small
issue. When dealing with an ISO filename that is a bit long the file
creation aborts. The fine folks at Pinnacle suggest that in total, the
complete pathname must not exceed 258 characters. And the file name part
of this should not exceed 60 characters. This of course is nothing that
will hinder your enjoyment of creating disks of your favorite show.
The TV tuner software works great, the only true complaint was the
install time. It took a bit of time. Install get update, reboot, get
update, reboot. But of course if you want all the latest fixes and or
tweaks to make sure you get full enjoyment of your new toy, this is a
small price in time to pay then.
Plan on maybe 30 minutes, it can catch you unaware because if you forget
something and try to click back to a previous screen, you may just get
an unexpected abort and you have to start all over again. So read
carefully as you do your install. Once it’s all done though, it’s time
to watch some TV on your PC. Even as I sit and write this article I am
watching my favorite TV show in one corner of my computer screen. Makes
work go by pretty darn fast. As for recording your shows, the process
can be a bit slow on most systems. You want to make sure you have a
really large amount of free disk space on your drive to be able to get
along making a DVD of your favorite show without running into any
errors. From time to time depending on the signal there was some minor
sound and video sync problems, just hair breadths of a second but just
enough to notice.
The sync issues where not consistent and did not hinder the enjoyment of
watching TV or channel surfing. It should be noted also that while I did
get some channels they where a mixed bag. There where a few washed out
signals that gave some grainy pictures, and then of course there where a
few that where darn perfect. Happy to say one of the good channels
happened to have one of my favorite shows on, so that’s what I am
watching as I write this. It’s pretty obvious as we took the stick and
the lap top on a test trip around town and then even to another larger
city about 50 miles from home…the results will vary from where you are
at, and the conditions around you.
Pinnacle has created a very affordable solution for watching free over
the air TV signals. The PCTV HD Pro Stick is a good buy for any price
minded entertainment junkie or someone that just wants a break on the
go. Just do not expect hundreds of channels at your fingertips. Things
can only get better when the TV standard makes the switch to HD sometime
in the future, we will have plenty of signals then.
Have fun play games
Watch some TV!
Edwin Millheim |
