Rating: 
Summary: Quite surprising...
Review: I ordered this card not more than a week ago. It arrived, and I had it installed in about 20 minutes. The installation instructions were ok, but basic knowledge of the inside of a PC is reccomended. Anyway, I installed the drivers and software and attempted to watch cable TV on my computer -- I was quite surprised with the quality. I have a relatively slow computer (200Mhz), but I have a 10,000rpm SCSI-3 hard drive, and I am able to capture video at 320x240 at 30 frames/second with excellent results. All in all, it's not the greatest piece of hardware in the world, but, for the ~$... I paid for it, it is worth every penny!
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the faint hearted
Review: The hardware functions well. The TV viewing software works well. The Video editing software, Studio PCTV is more than a little difficult to install. Once it is installed, it is unreliable. One needs only to visit the manufacturer's web site,......, and look at the tech assist section to get a taste of what to expect. Mainly the user will need to be able to download an uninstaller program( to use after each install attempt to clear the registry because the uninstall feature doesn't work completely), and an upgrade to the supplied program. These downloads will help, but will still not make the program trouble free. Expect system lock ups, fatal errors etc. These problems seem to exist for any processor/windows combination. All drivers associated with video card, and sound if they are more than a year or so old wil likely need upgrading. These comments apply to the video editing program. There are other video editors available for use some free, some expensive and some in the middle. These will work. Some are recommended by frustrated customers on the above mentioned Mfr's web site. The TV viewing, capture program works much better. You will be satisfied with it. Advice- If you are a beginner and want make movies, or rather mpegs out of movies, plan on some other software. If you want ot watch TV on your computer, this will work great.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Problems w/XP
Review: I shared many of the same problems as the other reviewers. I got a brand new PC and moved my card from a Dell to an HP Pavilion 450y. The software installed fine, but everytime I try to watch TV it hangs the computer within one minute. It hangs XP! I thought that wasn't possible. I have spent close to a week going back and forth with Pinnacle Support. At least they respond to me, but it has taken forever for them to basically just give up. They told me to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows...on a machine that is 10 days old. Don't think I am going to do that.
Well, I've wasted enough of my time on this...going to buy a TV and just make room for it.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly Designed Software and Driver.
Review: I've not been happy with my PCTV at all. The biggest problem is the driver and capture software call "PCTV Vision" provided with the device. The software seems designed by some armature programmer without much experience developing real Windows compliant applications. A couple of examples: (1) The open and save file dialogs do not use the standard Windows interface, (2) The application window color is fixed light blue and disregards your desktop color settings, (3) There are no HELP or ABOUT buttons, etc. In addition to these cosmetic problems, the software has deeper and more troublesome bugs that are difficult to work around. Version 5.1 of "PCTV Vision" was not even certified for Windows XP. Pinnacle claims their latest 5.5 version is both certified and improved, but I noticed absolutely no difference. I've never been able to burn a CD using PCTV Vision, even though my CDR/W works perfectly with all my other applications. The Pinnacle software relies on Microsoft DirectX for multimedia operations. However, DirectX reports a number of errors (such as improper opening and closing of multimedia objects) whenever PCTV Vision is run. The PCTV driver also doesn't play well with other applications. When I've tried to access the PCTV capture card from another program, such as Adobe Premier or ULEAD MovieFactory, the driver bombs and reports an error. While I have been able to do basic recording using PCTV, I always keep wishing I'd bought a capture card and software that was more professionally designed. SPECIAL NOTE FOR PAL FORMAT USERS: The PCTV tuner is fixed for NTSC video format on the USA model and PAL video format for the European model. I found the advertising on the box very misleading as it claimed it worked with both NTSC and PAL, but this only applies to the composite input and not the TV tuner itself. I receive both PAL and NTSC signals, but am unable to use my USA version PCTV to record any of the European channels. If you're working with mixed format signals like me then be sure to check that capture card tuner you buy can process them (check the manual before buying if possible). BOTTOM LINE: The PCTV capture card works, but you might be happier with a card from another company.
Rating: 
Summary: Works fine but do not use Windows ME
Review: The card works quite fine for the price. Great if you only want to watch TV! I own a Pentium I 200Mhz with a S3 Virge (2MB) graphics card and 32MB RAM. Watching TV works really nice with this setup. WARNING : If you have Windows ME installed it won't work at all. I had Windows ME on my PC but had to downgrade it to Windows 98 for it work at all. On Win 98 there are still a few glitches though: 1. It's slow when capturing snapshots of your TV screen, it will actually do some disk paging and will get the picture but not the one you saw when you clicked the button but the one corresponding to a few seconds later. 2. It hangs when trying to capture video. ADVISE : You probably need better hardware than what I have. BEFORE YOU BUY : Check your graphics card is supported by Pinnacle. Not all the features (such as video capture) work with all cards.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly Designed Software and Driver.
Review: I've not been happy with my PCTV at all. The biggest problem is the driver and capture software call "PCTV Vision" provided with the device. The software seems designed by some armature programmer without much experience developing real Windows compliant applications. A couple of examples: (1) The open and save file dialogs do not use the standard Windows interface, (2) The application window color is fixed light blue and disregards your desktop color settings, (3) There are no HELP or ABOUT buttons, etc. In addition to these cosmetic problems, the software has deeper and more troublesome bugs that are difficult to work around. Version 5.1 of "PCTV Vision" was not even certified for Windows XP. Pinnacle claims their latest 5.5 version is both certified and improved, but I noticed absolutely no difference. I've never been able to burn a CD using PCTV Vision, even though my CDR/W works perfectly with all my other applications. The Pinnacle software relies on Microsoft DirectX for multimedia operations. However, DirectX reports a number of errors (such as improper opening and closing of multimedia objects) whenever PCTV Vision is run. The PCTV driver also doesn't play well with other applications. When I've tried to access the PCTV capture card from another program, such as Adobe Premier or ULEAD MovieFactory, the driver bombs and reports an error. While I have been able to do basic recording using PCTV, I always keep wishing I'd bought a capture card and software that was more professionally designed. SPECIAL NOTE FOR PAL FORMAT USERS: The PCTV tuner is fixed for NTSC video format on the USA model and PAL video format for the European model. I found the advertising on the box very misleading as it claimed it worked with both NTSC and PAL, but this only applies to the composite input and not the TV tuner itself. I receive both PAL and NTSC signals, but am unable to use my USA version PCTV to record any of the European channels. If you're working with mixed format signals like me then be sure to check that capture card tuner you buy can process them (check the manual before buying if possible). BOTTOM LINE: The PCTV capture card works, but you might be happier with a card from another company.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible hardware, buggy software.. but wait! It gets worse
Review: I don't think I've ever been as disappointed with any electronics component as I have been with the Pinnacle TV tuner card. Here's what you're SUPPOSED to get: the Pinnacle TV tuner card accepts incoming video signals through an included S-video in, composite in, or conventional cable/Antenna input. Software supplied allows you to switch between those three inputs; in the case of the cable/antenna input, a built in tuner allows tuning in VHF/UHF channels 2 to 83, or cable channels from 2 to 160 (or therabouts). The video signal is displayed on a resizable screen, which operates much like a conventional window; or as a full screen display. Audio handling is sparse at best; the card has an audio out jack (no audio in) and you are supplied with a small external jumper cable, which you are expected to run from the audio out jack to the external input jack on your sound card. (Lets hope you're not already using it for something else.) The card also has an internal audio out jack, but no cord is supplied; and the unconventional plug is difficult to find. The card offers you the opportunity to watch TV in a variable sized screen; to record TV; and to pause live broadcasts, giving you the rough equivalent of a Tivo or Personal Video Recorder. When you hit pause, the screen freezes, and the video signal is diverted to your hard drive as a digital datastream. Hit pause again, and the data comes off your hard drive and is displayed on your screen, while new data continues to be recorded to your hard drive. In this fashion you can jump forward and back through the program, playing the same section over again, skipping past commercials, and generally having a merry old time. At least, that's the sales pitch. The difference between the Pinnacle PCTV and the Pinnacle PCTV Pro, is that the pro includes a stereo TV decoder (the non-pro version is mono only). If you read the enclosed advertisng material, you will be told that the Pro also includes a stereo FM tuner; and indeed, the Pinnacle PCTV Pro website states, "Watch TV or listen to the radio on your PC." However, when you purchase the Pinnacle Pro card, you will find that there is NO radio tuner, there is NO FM antenna input (even though one is clearly illustrated in the enclosed advertising), and indeed there is virtually no hardware difference between the two cards. But the lies and deceit don't stop there. Let's go back to the claims made for the card on the Pinnacle website. "Create your own movies from video captured from TV, VCR or Camcorder with the easy to use Studio software." Well, true enough... but they fail to mention that the Studio software supplied is a 30 DAY TRIAL. After that point, the software locks up, and you are expected to purchase it, at great additional cost. Without this software, you can still record TV shows; but you cannot edit out commercials, string multiple shows into one presentation, or any other commonly done VCR-type tasks. You can start recording, stop recording, and that's it. No pause, no nothing. Let's talk about the hardware for a moment... or lack thereof. You see, there's not much hardware here, and that's a problem. That conventional NTSC or PAL TV signal is analog, and it needs to be converted to a digital format FAST. The digital conversion takes a lot of processing power, and the conversion from raw digital video to MPEG format takes an awful lot more. Most TV cards that permit recording and PVR functionality - such as the Hauppage 350, available through Amazon - accomplish this with built in hardware MPEG encoders/decorders. Not so the Pinnacle card; it makes use of your computer horsepower, substituting a software program for a hardware chip. This is fine, at least in theory; but to make it work, you need to have well written software, and enough computing horsepower to dim the lights in the neighborhood whenever you boot up the machine. I was using an Athlon XP 1800+ with 768 megs of 333 Mhz RAM, two 40 GB Maxtor Diamondmax 7200 RPM Hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration, and Windows XP home... and it wasn't enough. Even with all nonessential programs and services shut down, the performance was still unsatisfactory. A minimum 2.5 GHz processor and 1 GB of FAST RAM - and a state of the art video card, like a high end Geforce FX or equivalent Radeon - would be a minimum requirement. But even then, the software is so glitchy, buggy, unreliable and undependable as to make the whole procedure an exercise in frustration. Oh, I could go on. I could talk about the audio drifting out of sync with the video every time you change channels, making it impossible to channel surf. I could talk about the included remote that turns the software off, but won't start it again. I could tell you about the amazingly unhelpful technical support, the fiendishly confusing driver downloads section, the dozens of bugs... but you must get the picture by now. This is a lousy product. It was implemented by a rank amateur with no concept of quality, and a keen desire to save money on manufacturing. The software was written by an individual or group without the faintest concept of the procedures necessary to write quality software - and it shows, all over the place. There's a lot of amateur freeware that is better written than is the software packaged with this product. This software has more bugs than a cheap, inner city flophouse. The lack of ethics in marketing, production, and execution all speak volumes in describing Pinnacle Corporation as a company desperate to sell a fundamentally defective product in any way possible, including lies, treachery and deceit. However, all the glitzy packaging, the loud promises and enthralling hype can do nothing to change this product from what it really is: a sad little electronics disaster. If, after all I've said, you're still contemplating buying this card, let me offer you one last word of advice: buy the card from a retailer with a very generous returns policy. Because you're going to be taking advantage of it.
Rating:
Summary: Not good under XP
Review: Bought it for video capture, but never got that far. Only set up the TV funtion. Works great for a few minutes, then loses sound. Change channel sound comes back for another minute or two. Repeats over and over again.
Using Windows XP, AMD Athlon XP 2500. Tried two different sound cards, including SB Live. Same results.
Wouldn't recommend.
Rating:
Summary: This card has TONS OF ISSUES W/ XP
Review: the pinnacle pctv is not good enough under XP environment. don't take my word for it. go check the product discussion group at (...) the customer support- anyone who ever called them knows this very well-is one of the worst you will ever encounter. all the gimmicks to keep you on hold and then they sometimes abruptly hang up on you .
Rating:
Summary: Surprised it works as advertised!
Review: I got it for [$] after rebate at CompUSA. Running it on a 2Ghz Pentium 4 with Windows XP. Installation and configuration was easy and the directions were pretty clear. Everything works, like time-shifting and recording. A tip: I created a separate partition on my drive just for video recording and caching. This way the data doesn't get fragmented and munged with all your Windows system files and you'll get a much smoother experience. The only problem is that in Windows XP, when you switch between users without logging out, the screen hiccups and it stopped recording. I think the picture quality is great; I see some noise patterns but then I also see them on my TV/VCR so I'm not blaming this product.
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