Pinnacle PCTV nanoStick

They are selling these on 1-day.co.nz


http://www.1-day.co.nz/products/BLJKAW8NS


I know the price is a have, but are they to good to be true??

Or a decent piece of equipment??

No Aerial needed?????

Am interested to hear what others have to say, that have had experiences with these.

I have a usb one from avertv that uses a mini aerial... reception is less than ideal but what you would expect.

Id be a bit dubious.

From the site:Note:

Pinnacle make OKish stuff. It appears to still have an antenna however? Software that comes with it is likely shithouse I bet.

For HDTV, you need a reasonable fast PC and video card.

Hauppauge are pretty much the go in this area though.

I have a new laptop, so specs are all sweet... thought it could be a easy option for tv in my room, but wasn't sure if it was a gimicy product or not.

Yeah my flatmate got one off one day also, only to discover his pc specs weren't up to it.

Both me and my other flatmate gave it a go on our computers. The poxy aerial built into it could pick up a signal at my house but you had to get it in the 'right place'. You can plug in an external UHF aerial no worries though.

However like Kris said, software that comes with it is shit. Crash crash crash crash

Wouldn't work for more than 10mins without the computer needing to be restarted. I gave it back to my flatmate and said "This is shit no thanks."

A couple of sticks/cards I looked at on Ascent required 3ghz minimum and dual core minimum so you've got to be careful with the specs.
I ended up not getting one

Only one channel of Olympics for me...

oops...


well I got it, was just going to attach to another aerial.

Will see how it goes, guess I can always sell it on trade me

On the topic of tv.. I came across this unit today. Aside from the Freeview guide not being supported, it's a pretty awesome PVR and can record HD to an external USB hard drive of your choice. Only one tuner, so you can watch multiple TV3 & C4 as they reside on one MUX, but you can't record TVNZ while watching TV3 (two different MUX).

http://www.dtvs.co.nz/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=22&products_id=64

Thoughts anyone?

well since that is one of the requirements you've been moaning about i fail to see the point.

Recording hi-def out of the box vs epg.. Let me think about that one.

BTW: EPG is 100% working in the living room again and all channels now supported again.

If you run into the same issues you could always lookout for other software to run it, which may or may not fix the crashing. But we had the same issues on Vista / XP. I didn't bother looking for updates either.. just couldn't be fuxored.

I saw the price of the Hauppage 4000 was around $170 anyway. Something I'd prefer with a desktop. (obviously no good for laptops)

Been reading a bit about it, if I get a better antenna I should be sweet, have a pretty new laptop with dual core processor, so I think the latency issue might not be to much of a problem.

arrived this morning, so fingers crossed.

How'd it work for you?

Everything set up sweet, just need to get antenna, as its not picking up anything heh

had mine for a month now. just trying it out again tonight for the first time in a few weeks, and the software wont even start now.

either the stick itself is unreliable, or the software is.

it worked ok at first, especially with outside aerial plugged in. i found it was ok if you started and stayed on the same channel, but if you started changing it would freeze up.

now investigating if there is more suitable software that will run this damn stick!

try MediaPortal.


in all honestly, a lot of this software is full of fail however.

cheers,
Downloading now... Downloaded

will give it a try

if you're using XP, you'll need this hotfix

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896626

good instructions for mediaportal here

http://cranznz.googlepages.com/

Using Vista Business.
those instructions were pretty thorough. Cheers!
Unfortunately still not very stable tho.
Might just give up on it for now

I bought the Pinnacle nanostick 73e about two years ago, but was unable to use it on my Toshiba Satellite M60 laptop, which has a 2GHz intel type M processor. The box said the software would run on my system. Then I found the fine print - HD720p as used by television in NZ would not run. Indeed, TV1 froze after a couple of frames. I uninstalled the software and put the package away.

Last October I bought the Toshiba Satellite L650D laptop which runs an AMD Trurion core duo processor, roughly equivalent to an intel core duo i3. Since that laptop renders HD720p video at less than 100% CPU duty cycle, I gave the nanostick another try. Windows 7 did not like the installation from the enclosed disk. I found the latest Pinnacle installation - TV Center V6.4. This would install and run, but with stuttering audio, and after a few channel changes, the program would freeze.

I un-installed TV Center V6.4 completely and restarted the computer, then plugged in the nanostick. Windows 7 has the drivers for it and installed them! Was TV Center V6.4 ignoring these drivers and duplicating them?

I decided to check out the Windows Media Center that came with the Windows 7 installation. With the nanostick 73e plugged in, the 'live tv' part of 'Windows Media center' indeed found our Freeview channels and loaded them, and it plays them without stuttering. Changing channels can be done by entering the numeric keys, without freezing the program. I have not yet tried recording TV programs.

The moral of the story?

You do need a Windows 7 installation on a core duo chip set (intel or AMD), i3 or equivalent, as minimum. This will recognise the nanostick when plugged in.

Do not attempt to use the Pinnacle TV center 6.4. It does not appear to check for pre-existing drivers, and Windows 7 does not check for any TV Center drivers either.

Henry