Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick

Reviewed by: nyfilmer

Strengths: Portability (very small), USB type so I don't have to use a PCI slot for a tuner.

Weaknesses: The playback/recording software is not as stable as it can be.

Overall: In my opinion, this product is probably put to its best use if you satisfy the following three conditions: you primary use the TV tuner for recording and watching TV on your laptop while you are traveling (not on your home desktop), you live and travel mostly to areas that have digital TV stations and no tall buildings nearby , and you have Windows Media Center on your PC. I purchased this USB TV tuner to watch TV and record on my desktop PC without using up a PCI slot. I haven't been able to use the digital antenna that is provided in the package because I am surrounded by skyscrapers, and they distort Over The Air signals. I have hooked it up to Time Warner's cablebox plus DVR via S video cable, and use the stick to watch TV and record segments of shows that I would like to keep on my PC, using Windows Media Center. The quality of the recorded footage is alright. Not bad, but not as good as what you can get on DVD disk recorders.The product comes with two programs. One is Pinnacle Studio for recording and editing recorded footage. It's really an easy to use cool program with a lot of features. The only thing is its size (almost 1GB, yes! "Giga" bytes) The other program is for watching TV on your computer's monitor and for recording. The same stuff that Windows Media Center does. However, from my experience, the program is a lot less stable and more likely to freeze compared to Windows Media Center. In fact, I cannot recommend this to people who do not have WMC for that reason. In summary, it does what it is supposed to do for the most part. It is just not the best TV tuner for me because I am not taking advantage of everything it is good at (portability, digital antenna) and because of the unstable software. I have to say get it only if you primarily need a tuner for trips and have Media Center on your laptop. If not, there must be a better tuner for you.