Overall, I would rate this product high. The channel changing is fast, the picture quality is awesome. The tuner itself is small, and it’s really nice that Pinnacle includes everything in the package to get started. This is an easy carry in a laptop back to catch up on some TV when on the road or at the airport. You could also use this at work, if you wanted a stealth way to catch up on Oprah during the day.
After installing the TVCenter software, I really love using this product through the Vista Media Center experience, the MCE Guide is much better than the included TVCenter PRO software.
On the downsides for this product consider the following:
QAM Support
The model of the PCTV HD Pro Stick that we had did not support Clear QAM, ClearQAM is the new technology that is being used by Cable Companies to send HDTV channels down your regular cable lines. I have been informed that Pinnacle has added this feature to their newer versions of this PCTV line of hardware.
TVCenter PRO does not let PC go to sleep.
The TVCenter PRO software has a background process that always runs called PMCLoader.exe, this process does not allow the PC to go into sleep mode. I ended up running ‘MSCONFIG’ and disabling the PMCLoader.exe and the remoterm.exe processes from starting at startup. After making this change, the computer was able to go to sleep again.
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