Pinnacle PCTV TV Tuner and Video Capture Card
by Pinnacle Systems

Category: CE
See more product details

(Click here)

Digital Photo Product Details

• Watch TV on your PC
• Capture still images and make movies
• Video conference
• Get enhanced TV broadcasts with Intercast
• 640 by 480 capture resolution

• Sennheiser RS 45 HiFi Stereo Wireless Headphones (Black)
• Spikemaster SM-BG8 8 Outlet Block, Standard Protection Surge Protector (White)
• Philips HP550 Full Size Foldable Headphones
• Panasonic RP-HT970 Vibration Series Home Theater Headphones
• Jensen JF25 Stereo Headphones

Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Pinnacle PCTV TV Tuner and Video Capture Card

Customer Review: The Pinnacle PCTV is GREAT!!
Summary: 5 Stars

What is the difference? They both use the same chip base, the BT878A. But the Voodoo doesn't have drivers for Windows 2000 and the voodoo is twice as expensive with a retail price of $99.

Since I use Windows 2000 and the voodoo is not Win2K compatible, I decided to get the PCTV. The card installed without any trouble, and after installing drivers and rebooting I was watching my favorite TV channels. It took only 15 minutes total. For only $41, the card has amazing performance. It is inexpensive, but it's definately not a cheap piece of hardware! What else would you expect from Pinnacle? After all, they make professional level video editing hardware. This is their field.

However, the video editing software that comes with the card is not too amazing, imho it is best to only install the drivers and the PCTV Vision from the CD. The rest of the software that comes on the CD is pretty crippled compared to other video editing software you can find out there.

Description of Pinnacle PCTV TV Tuner and Video Capture Card

We installed the capture card in a free PCI slot on our motherboard and connected the audio loop-back cable from the audio-out jack on the tuner card to the audio-in jack on the sound card. We needed to install the software twice as several drivers were not installed on the first try. The manual left a little to be desired and we found that we needed to resort to the help function quite frequently to understand specific features of the software. Online documentation was also slim, but once we found the information, using all the applications was simple and intuitive.

After we connected an antenna to the TV tuner, reception was surprisingly clear. (You also have the option of connecting cable to the input instead.) The images were not too pixelated when viewed at a 16-bit, high-color resolution. We had the option of viewing the picture at full screen, 640 x 480, or 320 x 240 pixels; the full screen picture looked crisper than a standard television without a cable connection. If you have a computer in a living area at home with a decent-sized monitor, you may be tempted to watch TV on your computer.

The Studio software features an easy-to-use interface that lets you capture video from the tuner or from composite or S-Video sources. Making movies is as simple as dragging and dropping clips, adding titles (which you can customize with the easy TitleDeko software), overlaying sound, and, with one click, making the compiled frames into a digitized AVI (audio video interleaved) or MPEG movie. We threw together a short film using several television clips and some previously created AVI files, added sound effects over the top, created titles, and saved the movie--all in under 45 minutes. The final product, a two-minute MPEG movie, was about 8.3 MB. Although slightly rudimentary, this feature of the Pinnacle Studio PCTV is perfect for families who want to compile clips to send to friends, and the results are surprisingly slick.

Pros:

• Great picture
• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop software
• Powerful features
• Terrific value

Cons:

• Slim documentation
• Slightly difficult installation