Product Review: Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick (801e)

By Aaron Burkhart

The Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick (801e) is a small TV tuner (about the size of a thumb) that allows TV viewing by plugging into a USB 2.0 port on either a laptop or desktop. It’s pretty versatile, whether you want to watch analog or digital broadcast signals, FM radio, or unencrypted digital cable.

Since the portabilityof the Pro Stick is its main advantage, I tested it out on a laptop; the recommended minimum specs are a Pentium M 1.8 Ghz, with a 64MB graphics card and at least 1GB of RAM for a smooth HD experience. I tested it out on a Toshiba Satellite with an AMD Turion 64×2 1.9 Ghz, with an ATI Radeon X1200 and 2GB RAM (running Vista).

In short, my system made the minimum specs, but not by much.

The first step is to decide what type of connection to use: It comes with an antenna for broadcast reception, an S-Video and stereo audio adapter that plugs into the side of the Pro Stick, or a coaxial cable can be connected to the end of the Pro Stick for unscrambled cable. Since, again, portability was my main focus, I connected the antenna to the Pro Stick and placed it on a nearby windowsill (the cable is about 3 feet).

The set up takes 20 minutes or more, depending on if you want to install the included VideoSpin editing software. If you already have a good editing program it’s probably unnecessary, as VideoSpin doesn’t have any directly integrated features with the Pro Stick software. After installing the main TVCenter Pro software is the step to scan for available channels. BY default it will scan for every available signal, but if you want to save time and know that you won’t be wanting FM radio capabilities or analog broadcasts or whatever signal type, you could just have it scan for the signal type you want. I had it scan for everything, and after five minutes or so it came up with a dozen analog channels, two digital channels, and more radio stations than I knew we had.

Since analog broadcasts are terrible where I live (Anchorage, AK) I wasn’t expecting much from those stations, as huge antenna arrays are needed to get a clear picture on a television set, and the Pro Stick antenna understandably couldn’t get a clear picture. If you have a rooftop antenna setup, you can connect that to the Pro Stick. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to see that the two digital channels came in almost as clear as cable. Since the DTV transition is still pending here, I would only expect that more channels will be picked up once all the stations here switch over.

Of course, the Pinnacle Pro Stick does more than just pick up TV, it also acts as a digital video recorder, allowing live TV to be paused, rewound, saved, etc. for as much as your hard drive can hold. Its output format is also adjustable, so recordings of programs can be scheduled and recorded in PSP or iPod ready formats, and are easily transferred to those devices from a laptop. Even TiVo’s program transfer options can’t compete with the simplicity of the Pro Stick’s functionality.

However, there is a caveat: a system has to have more than minimum specs to use all the features. As it was, just watching a digital broadcast maxed out my system RAM; trying to convert the video at the same time was too much to handle and the picture became garbled, although just capturing a recording in the native MPEG format worked fine. Screen grabs also take just a click , so it’s great for sharing a choice moment from a favorite show on a message board or forum. The TVCenter interface was also less than intuitive, and it took a while to find out how to switch between analog and digital channels, since there’s no way to do it using the incuded remote control.

Just to be complete, I switched the TVCenter to radio and found it to be as clear as it should be and just as easy to record whatever was on, although it didn’t offer a choice of formats, only a Windows Media Player .MPA extension, which I found odd.

Those with cable TV and DVRs, or who watch TV shows over broadband WI-FI won’t likely find the most use out of the Pro Stick, but with a powerful enough system it would still offer some convienences. But anyone still watching TV over rabbit ears or without wireless internet will find a lot of functionality in this little device.

For doing what it says it does, I’d give the Pinnacle Pro Stick (801e) good marks, but the higher-end laptop requirements and interface issues (besides clunkiness, there’s a pay subscription service in order to have on-screen TV listings) leave it with a 7 out of 10 score.