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Pinnacle PCTV HD Stick now handles digital cable
Pinnacle’s seen some success with its PCTV HD Sticks over the past year, letting you turn your PC into an HDTV and TiVo-like digital video recorder (DVR) for peanuts. But we weren’t really interested until now. The change? This latest version works with unencrypted (that means not HBO) digital cable channels, where the previous version only worked with analog cable or over-the-air broadcasts.
So this little thumb-sized thingamajig can give you HDTV for $69.99? Yep, says so right here. Plus, the $100 Pro model gives you stereo sound, FM radio reception, video capture from a cable or satellite set-top box and a crippled version of software that exports video to iPod/iPhone or PSP. It’s available today, but does it work? We’ll be testing this baby soon, so stay tuned.
Via Pinnacle
By CJW at 7:28 PM ON 04/07/08
Wait, you get digital cable signal decoding for $69, but you gotta pay $100 for stereo? Isn't DTV capable of 5.1 audio too? Something seems fishy.
I've got one of their HDTV tuner sticks hooked up to my MacBook, and it works fine until I start taxing the USB bus and processor too hard, like say when I'm running Aperture off an image library on a MyBook drive. The stick just dies then, and this is when watching an analog cable signal. I'm pretty sure the USB bus runs out of bandwitdh, rather than the CPU, but it's hard to tell because both are getting nailed pretty hard in that scenerio.
Even so, this looks like fun. Maybe I'll upgrade in a year or so. I look forward to your hands on.
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CJW:
Wait, you get digital cable signal decoding for $69, but you gotta pay $100 for stereo? Isn't DTV capable of 5.1 au...More »