Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate Stick

If you intend to watch tv through your computer, this stick will work fine, no converter box required. That’s what the ATSC part of the specs mean.

I had the same thought, so I looked it up. According to Pinnacle’s own site, the 880e is suppose to be fully compatible with vista 64 bit.

would i be able to connect this to my tv and record xbox 360 footage like a dazzle?

wish it worked on macs

The software runs from the Stick. No software installation required. You also can save up to 2 hours recording on the stick.

If your TV has AV out, then yes. There is an AV adapter included that works like a Dazzle. If you click on the picture you’ll see what’s included in the package. It’s the cale second from the right. It has S-Video, composite video, and audio in (via RCA to 3.5 mm adapter.)

If your video card can connect to your TV, it would work. Otherwise, you have to watch on your computer, which is really the idea of this gadget anyway.

Anyone know if it has significant/excessive lag on the composite input? Would I be sorry if I hooked a standard def game system to it?

Has anyone tried this sort of thing in Manhattan?
My TV doesn’t tune channels with a BowTie, and my apartment is on the south end of a Lower East Side building near streetlevel. I’ve got a lot of brick & steel between me and the Empire State Building. Do you think there’s any chance an antenna like this would recieve a signal without having to run a 6 story cable up to the roof?

I’ve purchased a total of three PCTV Pro sticks from various woots, as well as the PCTV card when it was last offered. The Pro stick is similar to the one that’s up today, but it lacks support for ClearQAM.

It works well enough. Pinnacle’s software is kind of heavy and sometimes buggy, though.

I’ve gotten the ATSC tuner to work in Media Center under 64bit Vista, but not the analog tuner. I have not been able to make the Pro stick work in XP MCE at all (and yes, I installed the MCE package.)

Don’t use the CD that comes with it- download the newest version of the software from the Pinnacle website. You’ll need the CD key from the one they give you.

I got the pro version last time it was up on Woot. I followed the installation directions only to have the installer freak out on me and freeze up my lappy. Then after reinstalling it I get a message saying that I need to install Microsoft .NET framework 2.0, when I already have 3.5 SP1. Are the two versions different enough that the Pinnacle software won’t recognize the newer one?

I didn’t think to try using Windows Media Center to run it, so I’ll give that a shot, but as far as my experience goes, the bundled software is complete crappola, and I haven’t even had a chance to run it yet!

Ditto… Will there be a latency issue if I played my Wii through this?

works fine on a mac if you use EyeTV

I bought 2 of these back on Dec 4th and 1 works OK, a little bit of a resource hog but usable. Daughter likes it so I’m glad. The other was DOA. Contacting WOOT resulted in a email telling me to contact Pinnacle to resolve it. So I did and got a RMA and sent the item back. The RMA did not say what to send so I sent it all. So what did I get back? Just the stick and remote and antennae no CD rom. Without software and a serial number it’s useless. Attempts to email Pinnacle seem to be ignored. I still buy stuff from here but am VERY careful now. At any hint of potential problems with the item I move on as WOOT does not help.
Like I said Woot, lesson learned.

Bought this off of woot last time it was up.

The minute you get this you will have to download the Recovery update from pinnacle’s website.

PCTV HD Ultimate Stick (880e) ver 5.40

If you are going the use pinnacle’s software I’d recommend installing the version that installs to the your computers hard drive too.

TVCenter Pro 5.4 Update

Even tho the it says it only works with everything else but this one, it will work just fine.

using it on Vista 64 bit and works good in Media Center.

Note some software is still in beta.

this one has memory inside the usb u dont have to load anything and you can save upp to 2 hours memory…im sure it has more things i lookedit up

[QUOTE=Gendreavus, post:31, topic:214247]
Then after reinstalling it I get a message saying that I need to install Microsoft .NET framework 2.0, when I already have 3.5 SP1. Are the two versions different enough that the Pinnacle software won’t recognize the newer one?

Yes, .Net 2.0 is different than the .Net 3.5, .net 3.5 does NOT replace the 2.0 version.

I got the Pro a few weeks ago and the lag was like a second or two, so way too much for a game system.

Yep. You will need a dual-core processor to record. I use mine to view live TV on a 2GHz Pentium M and it works fine, but recording is just too much for my laptop because this TV stick doesn’t have an on-board encoder so it’s all done by the CPU in my laptop.

When I use it on my Pentium-D and Quad-Core desktop PCs at home, it works great to record and view.

I highly recommend this device!

The software is built in to the stick. No CD needed. Makes it nice for moving it between PCs in the house. It stores the channels, to, so set-up on the next PC is quicker. Pretty cool. Also stores what you record right on the stick.

The trade-off is that it’s larger than other Pinnacle sticks.