Reviews
Pinnacle PCTV HD Card and PCTV USB HD Stick
Michael
With Media Center PCs and the ability to watch TV on a computer becoming common, more and more people are in search for affordable TV tuners that can receive HDTV.
Pinnacle has a few such products, and we have tried out two of these products: Pinnacle PCTV HD Card (PCI) and the PCTV Pro HD (connects to a USB 2.0 port).
Whats surprised me about these tuners from Pinnacle is that they were under 80 dollars, and both deliver the same quality you'd expect from ATI TV Wonder 650 which costs about 130 USD. I have two ATI TV Woners 650's and I can tell you there is no difference in picture quality as far as I can tell, and the PCTV card is about half the size of the ATI TV Woner 650, so your system will probably be cooler with the PCTV Card.
Both HD Tuners from Pinnacle come with software that will allow you to watch TV on your Windows Based computer. Both were easy to install, and I had no hiccups installing the software for either product.
The included software will allow you to watch digital TV on your computer. This means you can get OTA HD channels.
The USB HD Stick comes with a 6 inch antenna, which for its size is pretty powerful. It surprised the hell out of me.
The PCTV HD Card does not come with an antenna, but you can connect your homes Digital Cable line or an OTA antenna to it, and it will pick up your digital channels perfectly, since the PCTV HD card is Clear QAM ready you can pretty much get every single cable and HD channely our cable provider offers. You can also connect the USB HD Stick to your digital cable line. However it is now Clear QAM ready, so depending on your cable provider, you may only receive your local channels.
The PCTV HD PCI Card does come with some stuff the PCTV USB HD stick doesn't come wiht, for example with the PCTV HD PCI card you get a remote control, and A/V adapter cables, the cables worked great for connecting a video camera to your computer and transfering over any recorded video.
Both tuners also worked with Windows Media Center, and since they are both under $80 USD (Cheaper on Amazon), they are great for adding more tuners to your Media Center. The more tuners, the more TV's you can stream to via Media Extenders, and the more programs you can record at one time. Both Tuners are Windows Vista Certified so you really don't need to use the included Pinnacle Software but it's nice to have. Also if you use Cyberlink Live to stream your TV it will work with both of these tuners as well.
Overall both tuners are great. Both were easy to install and easy to use, perfect for the novice user. The USB one is also great if you are a person on the go. You can install it on your laptop and watch TV anywhere, and since most hotels I stay at don't know the meaning of HD you'll get better quality TV on your computer than on the Hotels TV. For that, we award both tuners our 5 Star Kick Ass Award.
We will also feature both of these tuners in our Media Center Build Guide coming soon, and one of these tuners will be included in our 10 Things a Geek Wants for Christmas list come black Friday, so keep an eye out for both of those post!