Reviews for Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick TV Tuner

Free HDTV without the TV

Strengths: Powerful HDTV tuner in a small compact design.

Weakness: Poor analog tuner and only one year of free program guide updates from Pinnacle.

This is a great product. Until laptop manufacturers build in an HDTV tuner and antenna into their products, you won't be disappointed with this external HDTV tuner. Just connect the tuner to the included telescoping antenna or your local cable via coax then plug it into any available USB 2.0 port and Windows XP will detect it easily. The software installation, setup, and updates take a bit, but the setup screens are painless to navigate. Where this baby shines is the HDTV picture quality. The regular analog picture is fair to poor depending on signal strength and source, but the HDTV picture on a laptop rivals that of standalone LCD HDTV's without the box or the hefty price tag. Next time you hit the road, slip this baby into your lappy bag along with the compact remote and portable antenna and you'll be enjoying FREE HDTV anywhere without a TV.

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Pinnacle PCTV HD PRO STICK USB2.0

Strengths: great little TV tuner for computers (YAY HD), small, compact

Weakness: antenna pretty weak, software can be buggy

This little HDTV tuner is pretty impressive. Great for people in well covered over the air HD broadcast areas.
+:
Great for laptops (very small)
Antenna has magnetic bottom to hold it in place
also has inputs for digital cable (via coax cable), s-video, composite video and a digital audio jack.
works with BeyondTV (besides remote) and other antennas.

-:
Magnet not good if near computer (Hard drives etc)
software works, but must pay for continued service of the guides.
antenna is pretty weak (must be pretty close to a HD signal to receive channels).
remote doesn't work with other software.


Overall, this product is great for people who want to watch TV shows/ games in HD without a HDTV (use a laptop or computer with monitor/screen able to handle HD) Also works well for people in areas with plenty of HD broadcast coverage. Recommended to buy a decent antenna (either bunny ears or a decent directional one (Radioshack has a good one ITEM: 15-2187 Amplified HDTV indoor/outdoor directional antenna)

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OK, but not as portable as advertised

Strengths: Size, image quality.

Weakness: Requires lots of processing power

This is supposed to be a very portable device. For the most part this is true. It's biggest weakness, however, is that most of the processing is done by the CPU which requires large amounts of processing power. I just installed it on my laptop (HP with AMD CPU running @ 1.7GHz) and the application warned me that it could not display HD content properly. Analog was fine, but HD content was choppy.

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Cool to watch tv on notebook.

Strengths: Very small, with additional audio/video input.

Weakness: SW does not support Vista

Software didn't run under windows vista, had to download a beta release from their website. With this beta release it works seamlessly.

My note book Pentium 1.6 GHz, 1GB, Radeon 7500) has problems keeping up when using the timeshift function.

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Great little device

Strengths: Size is excellent; truly portable unit with a nifty portable antenna, outstanding HD picture; analog picture is highly dependent on location and reception

Weakness: None so far, except it takes a very long time to download patches and updates from Pinacle website.

This device is one that truly does what it says it can do. I watched the football game (Bears vs Jets) on my laptop Sunday, it was an outstanding HD picture using the provided antenna. If you're in Chicago, as I am, you can count on about 10 HD channels, and all the analog ones. I'm sure that's more than in other parts of the country. The analog signal was kind of fuzzy, but that was an antenna issue. Setup was a breeze, except for a necessary update that took almost 35 minutes to download, I think the narrow bandwith was on Pinnacle's side of the stream. I also tried out the video capture using the adapter cable. Recording and playback were good, done in Divx. I'm very happy with this product, I ran it on my Gateway laptop, 2,8 Ghz., 1 Gig of Ram, 80 Gig Hard drive.

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Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick-USB2 HD TV Tuner

Strengths: Small Size; USB versatility; Good Picture; Easy install

Weakness: Software could be more user friendly.

Overall, a very good USB tv tuner and well worth the cost!

I initially installed the tuner on a Compaq laptop running XP, celeron processor with 512mb, 15" widescreen. Installation was smooth and easy. I installed it using the supplied antenna and my local off-air channels in HD were of excellent quality!

I next connected analog cable which didn't go as smoothy. For one, it's a 4.3 picture so you'll have black bars on a widescreen laptop. I also started getting some jerky video. After visiting Pinnacle's web site, I resolved the issue fairly quickly. I can't remember the exact fix but it was quick and easy.

The software is average. Updates to the On screen program (you get one year free) and updates to the software itself, take some time--even on a high speed dsl connection. Also, the software is not extremely intuitive. Another thing I don't like is the main media center window which you primarily use does not allow changing of settings--you have to do that through another program. The DVR menus are easy to navigate and laid out.

Overall, a pretty good product and well-worthy upgrade.

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This thing is awesome

Strengths: Excellent video quality

Weakness: None

This product does exactly what it says. I have been watching very high quality HD on my laptop for a few weeks now. The channel scan turned up about 23 stations including 8 HD feeds. The quality on the analog channels is not good but all of the major networks are in HD or ATSC anyway. I can't say enough good things about this product. I watched the Bengals game on the back porch last Sunday!

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my first hd tv tuner

Strengths: small compact easy to carry

Weakness: bad software design

The hardware design is perfect and small. It came with a small antena which receives analog and digital signal. The software is terrible and no good. Fortunately, the hardware works with BeyondTV software while I was having problem using pinnacle remote in BeyondTV4.

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Cool if you like portable tv on your notebook.

Strengths: HDTV (ATSC)tuner SDTV (NTSC)tuner USB 2.0 device small size. includes a remote. magnet on base of antenna. the future is here, I like products like this. cool factor.

Weakness: If connected to a usb hub/usb pcmcia you need external power (AC). Otherwise the pinnacle pro stick crashes and disconnects from the computer. Pinnacle software has glitches. Needs powerful computer.

I had this product (pinnacle pctv hd pro stick usb 2.0) for about a month and a half and then sold it.
It's a cool device don't get me wrong, but falls short of my high standards.:)

It won't work on an old usb 1.1 port.
Which is not a surprise.
The remote won't work with Windows XP MCE, you need a different remote.
The program guide from pinnacle is free for one year, and after that: who knows pinnacle doesn't give a price.

I tried Beyondtv trial and do recommend there software for this device, very slick software,no fee for program guide, but software is expensive.

The pinnacle pctv hd pro stick in addition to the coaxial connector, also has a port for an adapter to connect your a/v cables, which is nice.

I wish notebooks had built in tv tuners as oppose to carrying this extra hunk of metal/plastic around.
May be sometime in the future they will be incorporated.
Apple are you listening, IPhone needs a tv.

So either buy this and settle for an average device that taxes your processor or wait for say, a standalone portable HDtv's LCD, "will they ever make those, not sure!,what gives battery life a problem?"

May be you should wait for the price to come down, kind of high right now, over $100 for this device.
I give this device 2.5 stars out of 5.
So some people will like it, others not so much.

PS the high definition picture was excellent and very nice to watch,except my laptop had trouble keeping up on occasion,and the picture would freeze.
Intel Pentium 4 2.0Ghz 512MB ram.
Definitely make sure you have a powerful computer.

The pinnacle software also records tv, does a good job.
Just need a lot of hard drive space.

Good Luck on your buying decision.
thanks for reading.

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Great when it works

Strengths: Good signal and great picture

Weakness: Stopped working after a couple uses, customer support has failed to even respond to the problem

I received this as a gift Christmas 2006. It loaded easily and worked great on a new Dell laptop with XP for a couple of uses. I did not use it for a month or so and when I tried it again, it would not work at all. I have uninstalled and reinstalled countless times per the instructions on Pinnacle's site. I have also tried to install on another new computer without any success. Pinnacle's website is also not user friendly. I typed in all kinds of information they wanted. It provided suggestions. I tried those and then they made me re-enter everything I had already entered. Pinnacle support has not even responded to my problems I sent to them approximately a month ago. I will never buy a Pinnacle product again. This was a complete and total waste of money.

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Pinnacle Pro Stick tuner does what it is suppose to...

Strengths: Well engineered, compact, adds HDTV portability to a notebook computer.

Weakness: Unconventional installation, read and follow instructions.

The Pinnacle HDTV Pro Stick interested me for its small footprint package, and it's dual purpose TV tuner/video capture capabilities. Combined with my computer's wireless internet capabilities, they both make a good portable media package. I also wanted the digital TV over-the-air format, because I was told that in 2009 no more analog TV broadcasts will be available.
I purchased the Pro Stick on Feb 16 from Best Buy, when it was heavily discounted. That day I installed it which took about one hour with all the necessary on line updating included. A neat feature is the 12 inch USB extension cable Pinnacle provides if adjacent USB port are occupied.
It's important to plug the Pro Stick in first before loading the CD-ROM applications.
I live in metro Milwaukee and was able to receive 14 analog TV stations and 17 digital stations. The video performance is awesome! I also signed up for the free one year TV program schedule subscription. Experienced time delay in changing channels, but my computer's processor meets Pinnacle's minimum requirements, which to me is acceptable.

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I can see clearly now! HDTV is awesome!

Strengths: Compact size, included external antenna, receives local over-the-air HD DTV broadcast. Included remote control and dongle for s-video or composite. Does what it's designed to do.

Weakness: Construction of device; feels cheap. The software (TVCenter Pro 4.9) is buggy. Device sticks out from laptop USB port putting stress on the USB.

Before I decided to by this HD TV tuner I had planned to by a pcmcia or express-card model. Unfortunately Pinnacle doesn't make those so I would have had to by a more expensive generic-brand card. While the USB does put some stress on the USB port it does include a short extension cable to elevate that. However, in either case carrying the laptop is more cumbersome with the stick protruding from it. Don't expect to move the laptop with the external antenna attached; it has a magnet on the base so accidentally putting it too close to the laptop could mess up the hard drive.

The software (TVCenter 4.9) has potential but is still far from spectacular. It tends to struggle when switching from window to full-screen and back. Occasionally the audio goes out of the sync with the video. Luckily the software is upgradeable and free to download for customers.

Overall the PCTV HD Pro Stick is a worth while investment; especially when all TV goes digital in 2009.

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Great Tuner, Poor Software

Strengths: Small, Watch your sports in HD, Portable HD

Weakness: software is terrible!

The tuner itself is great! Right now I am fighting with the software. I've heard it is better if you do not upgrade the software, or use BeyondTV. As for the tuner it's a very cool gadget, installed it on my desktop in my family room and use it to record shows. It even comes with an antenna which is just as portable as the tuner. Good product overall, would recommend.

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HD in a stck

Strengths: Allows you to pick up analod and digital channels

Weakness: singnal strnegth is iomnportant, computer power is a must.

Whatever channels i did get came in better then expected, not only can you pick up free channels, but the software will turn your pc into you very on dvr. very cool

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Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick USB

Testseek.com has collected 20 expert reviews for Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick USB and the average expert rating is 80 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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