Customer Reviews

Pinnacle PCTV HD Stick USB TV Tuner HDTV for PC

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I see a few people giving this computer tv tuner bad reviews. I understand why. But for me, it does it's main job just fine, which is take the cable signal and plays it back on my computer screen. If you are a bit of a poweruser, you shouldn't have too much trouble making this thing play back tv on your computer. As for the more sophisticated functions, your mileage may vary. If the average person whose computer probably has quite a few startup programs, and/or vista, I can see problems. The initial scan for channels isn't real informative. It's better to cancel the initial scan, and dig through the settings to set the software to "cable" or to "antennae", that makes a big difference. For now I give it 3 stars. It took me about 30 minutes to get completely comfortable with the basic software functionlity. I did try the over the air HD programming and was able to pick up 4 channels. It was pretty impressive. Standard cable was acceptable quality. When I try some of the other more advanced features, if they work well, I might upgrade to 4 stars. I bought mine at office depot for $99. I didn't want a separate TV, as I live in a small garage apartment. This fits the bill. I prefer it over the PCI TV Tuner that I had.
*****edit*****
I've now had the tuner for several months. It still works good. I like the straight forward recording feature...just hit the red record button and you're recording. I also like the pause feature. Pretty cool to pause live TV (it does this by transparently recording and simultaneously playing back). I'm using it with analog cable (not HD or digital), so all my comments reflect that type of usage. I'm using two 19" monitors under XP, and I use the second monitor to play tv, which can be in a window or fullscreen. I can of course simultaneously surf the web, play a game (windowed mode not fullscreen), etc...on my main screen. I like everything about it, the only thing that bugs me the most is an audio sync issue. When you first launch the TV application, and start watching TV, the audio and video are in sync. As you start changing channels, the audio/video sync starts to drift. I can fix this by changing to channel of choice and then restarting the application OR by using the pause button to pause and then un-pause a second later....seems to clear it up.

I have had mine for over half a year and it works great. I have Win Vista Ultimate and tried using Pinacle's PVR software and it would crash quite frequently. Instead, I tried using Windows Media Player and works GREAT. I can record shows, use the free program guide from the Media Center, burn to dvd... all in a simple package. The only thing I haven't been able to figure out is the secondary channels (like 4-2).

ive only had this for a couple of hours now but it was extremely easy to set up and picks up a lot of channels. the only set back is that the drive puts off a lot of heat and i can see this leading to problems later. the antenna that comes with it also is extremely short (cable wise, the antenna itself does not need to be long to receive signal). I really cannot compare this however to others because this is the first one i have had.

Awful, just painfully awful
1) Pause live TV, resume, try to change channel. Result: A machine so hung that not even the task manager comes up (the keyboard is dead). It can take multiple reboots and removal of the device (from the usb port to remove power) before the device "comes back" and is again "seen" by the computer (it thinks there's nothing attached until that happens).
2) Their setup guide lists 24 hour support but their website chat hours are only until about 7PM on the west coast on weekdays. Same with their phone support. Both were closed between xmas and new years which of course is when people would be having trouble with their pinnacle xmas present (that's NOT a hypothetical!).
They have yet to respond to email.
3) When you install, the setup wizard has no selection for say analog cable and so, if that's what your connection is, it only scans the first 13 channels. I got the rest of the channels by, after the install, getting to the setup dialog from the TV app itself and that has an option for cable. This is not mentioned anywhere. In fact, the first time I tried this it failed because it can't scan for channels when the TV app is up using the tuner (I guessed that). The scanning just says "error". You have to close the TV app and the scan.
Fabulous.

Ok... So initially I was a little turned off by this product. Here is why: the pinnacle software that comes with it just doesn't work that well. However, when I realized that the tuner could be used with widows media center I fell in love with it. It works great: media center will download the program information for you and all you have to do is set it to record. With recorded TV you can fast-forward through commercials, pause, and rewind. It makes watching TV so much more convenient. I don't know if I would watch TV at all without this thing. Thumbs up from me!

I work offshore and use this tuner allot on foreign vessels. It works with PAL as well as US. It works great.

Having tried a couple different PCI TV tuner cards and being less than impressed, I was ready to try some other design/type of solution.

Found this at a national big box electronics store for $29.99 on clearance.
Bought 2; with the 2nd being a gift.

I only installed the TV viewer/recorder software CD. I think the second CD in the pkg was a video creator type of pkg.

Within 20 minutes I was installed and watching TV, via my pc lcd screen.

I only have basic cable and the AUTO tuning found only 3 HD channels.

The tuning quality was very good on all channels.
Changing channels was a bit slow, like about 5-8 seconds AFTER you clicked on the UP or DOWN channel arrows.

Considering that this item is just a bit bigger than a pack of gum, the quality is better than the PCI tv tuners I have tried in the past.
(The pci tuners have like 6X the size, so you'd think that even a cheap one would be decent. But that has not been my experience).

FYI: I didn't look at the minimum requirements and initially I first tried to install this on my newest built-it-myself pc, which was running
Win2000. (Win2000 worked for everything else I've needed so far).
But,...........this item will NOT work with Win2000.
It ran fine on an older pc that I have, which had XP home as an OS.

If they had allowed me to give this product a MINUS 10 stars, that's what I would have given it.

We researched various tuners and bought this one. It was a disaster. The TV antenna has a very powerful magnet in the bottom. However, there is no mention on the package that a magnet is included or a warning not to get the antenna too close to your computer.

Unfortunately, I had my laptop in my lap as I was unpacking the unit. As I was unwrapping the antenna, the magnet attached itself to the palm rest on my laptop. I had to pull it off. My computer instantly went off and could not be rebooted. The magnet had totally erased all of the data from the hard drive. The hard drive had to be totally replaced. I called Pinnacle to tell them what happened. They said they would get back to me, and never did. I can't believe that they would create a product specifically for use with a computer and put a powerful magnet in it. Then they won't even take responsibility for the havoc it created.