Electronics : Pinnacle PCTV DVB-T STICK Nano

Rating: - Good stick, but some bad points.
I've had this stick for around 6 months now. Upon installation on Vista (32 bit), I only installed the driver and not the viewing software. Pinnacle want a subscription for getting program listings every day, when Windows Media Center does this for nothing and I find it really good and easy to use anyway. The stick comes with a useless small ariel connection, for using the included ariel and also an adaptor for using a standard tabletop or roof ariel. This adaptor sticks out a fair bit and is therefore quite easy to break (yes, mine's is broken already). So in conclusion, the stick produces a good picture and sound, but dont use the pinnacle tv software and unless you're going to leave the ariel plugged in all the time, do expect the adaptor connection to break.

---

Rating: - Does a good job
Pinnacle PCTV DVB-T STICK Nano

Bought one of these recently, to go with new Dell laptop. Had some initial problems with the channel scanning but found this was due to a co-axial cabling issue. Once the signal was restored, it found all the channels my existing STB sees on the signal from a wideband antenna distributed through the house.

The included aerial does nothing in my location, I have to have a 5m pole on the roof to get any decent DVB reception.

---

Rating: - Also works well in Ubuntu Linux 8.04
My computer is 10 feet from the window and the stick does not have any major problem picking up the TV signal, given that the analogue signal at my house (Melton Mowbray) tends to be weak and I need to use Sky dish for my main TV. The only problem is sometimes the picture and the sound are slightly out of sync - I'm not sure if this is due to signal / stick / my computer / software.

The software on the CD installed without problems but it took almost 15 min. However, it seems a bit bloated and is slow to install and to load each time you want to watch TV.

Installation was much more straight forward in Ubuntu Linux 8.04 if you know what you are doing despite the manufacturer says it is not supported, and the Linux software is quicker and easier to use as well. I am using Kaffeine from Ubuntu's repository, and you will need to download drivers for the stick. Details on how to do this are here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=856069

The Linux / Kaffeine software also seems to be faster at scanning for channels than the Windows software supplied.

---

Rating: - Great device
I bought the Pinnacle Nano stick after testing a cheap noname DVBT stick. With the old one I had fewer channels and unacceptable performance after 20 minutes of uninterrupted usage (probably due to overheating of the device).

The Pinnacle stick performs absolutely fantastic and is worth investing into.

Minus one star because of problems with the bundled software which crashes all the time on my WinXP SP2. Finally I had to switch to BlazeDTV and forget about remote control, because it is not not fully supported by the software.

---

Rating: - TVCenter Pro is Broken Software
Good points:

1. Hardware seems well built and capable.
2. I get decent reception using the supplied mini-aerial, but I'm in central London, on a second floor, and the aerial is next to the window.
3. The supplied software seems fairly feature full with lots of options etc, but:

Bad point:

1. The supplied software is also the most broken I've ever seen in what's supposed to be a retail product. It's a complete and utter embarrassment. I'm a programmer myself, and I have no idea how a company can get away with releasing something so ridiculously unstable.

Before I carry on, I should point out that this is the latest version of the software, I'm running it on 2 different 32bit XP machines that are both more than powerful enough (dual core + good ATI cards), my XP + drivers are up to date... etc etc.

Start the program, and there is about a 30% chance it'll crash on start-up, leaving processes running in the background so the app wont run again until you kill them in task manager(average users might think they have to restart their PCs at this point). Doing anything like changing settings, recording, sneezing, runs the risk of causing the program to crash. The default recording mode doesn't work (audio out of sync with picture) - DivX seem ok though.

I'm giving this 3 stars, since even with the problems, I'm still fairly satisfied. Once TVCenter Pro is up and running and you don't fiddle with it too much, it works ok, but generally Pinnacle should be ashamed of the quality of the software. Hopefully updates will fix the problems, but this is far from the first version of the program, so god knows how bad it was before!

From reading other comments, it seems you'll be ok if you have media centre. Otherwise prepare to get frustrated if you buy this.