Comments on: Pinnacle PCTV HD mini Stick

By: Stephan121677

Stephan121677 — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Just got my PCTV HD mini stick. I have tried to install from the cd on 2 different laptops and it doesn’t let me. Keeps giving me error -5008. What do I do? How do I make it work????

By: Dotmay

Dotmay — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:48:00 +0000

The installation started but when it gets to the disk utility it does not see My IDE controller or hard drive.

By: THOMPSON

THOMPSON — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:28:02 +0000

I foolishly did not write down my activation code and somehow misplaced it.I have the CD-Rom installation disc. With my Dell the I placed the disc in the drive and it automatically installed the program, however I have brand new Compaq Presario and tried doing the same and it did not work. Have called tech support several times to no avail. Will someone please help, also I cannot pick-up cable channels due to Vista, any recommendations?

By: bd

bd — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:04:59 +0000

Is it possible to record pc tv program on an available USB port using thumb drive, while the pinnacle tv tuner still plugged in one of the USB drive. I do not wish to record any of the tv programs to my hard disk drive and my pc does not have the dvd write drive, so I can’t pop in a blank dvd.
what are my options.

By: James Hirsch

James Hirsch — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:32:46 +0000

I don’t recommend that any waste their money on this. Reception is horrible, it freezes constantly and at least three times an hour is returns the error message “this channel is currently not available” and you have to reboot everything. Terrible product!

By: Saila Vash

Saila Vash — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:26:15 +0000

Will this product work with Ubuntu Linux 9.1, Linux Mint 8 or Windows 7? If not what product would you recommend? Or what software to make it work?

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:56:43 +0000

I bought the mini USB during a Black Friday sale. It worked okay for a little while but suddenly started crashing every time I tuned into a station. I did all the updates that I could, but nothing helped for long. I tried their on-line support for help and a month later I received a reply to a ticket asking for more info which I had supplied. Never received another response from my response with the info. Finally called the support line. Should have done that first. The guy I talked to knew the error and told me the issue. I am using Windows 7 and 64 bit to boot. There is some kind of error with the on-screen information and 7. He had me turn off the on-screen display and it has been working smoothly since. The only issue I have found is that I, like Del, am not able to view cable channels. Well, accept for the TV Guide station.

By: mim

mim — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:44:35 +0000

my laptop doesnt read the pctv anymore can u help me pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!!!!

By: Nilson Moreira

Nilson Moreira — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:32:33 +0000

I live in Cape Verde and i have a PCTV HD mini stick. But, When i search chanel, a message say that is incompatible.

I want know if is possible to use PCTV HD mini stick in my country (CAPE VERDE).

If is possible i want know what solve this problem?

THANKS.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:42:39 +0000

Purchased the tuner 2 days ago and installed it. I also have intermittent problems like the reviewer; even with the upgrade to V5.4 from 5.3 that came on the install disc. It does “work” with WMC, but not the “live tv” feature. I’ve managed to record shows just fine, and WMC makes it easy to do. I wish the program listings window would be expanded to show more time and a greater number of stations.

I have my media pc hooked up to my main TV in our living room, so watching HDTV on the computer isn’t that important. I already have a HDTV with a tuner, plus an additional Samsung Set Top Box feeding an analog signal to a panasonic analog hard drive/DVD recorder that still works great. The process to record digital TV on the old panny isn’t very versatile given a programming guide on the Sammy that is really unreliable. So having a 2 week window to record shows using WMC and the Pinnacle tuner is something I really need.

By: R. Cheek

R. Cheek — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:56:07 +0000

Gabriel – What are the specs of your netbook? I have ordered this unit and am waiting delivery. I didn’t consider its use with my netbook, but may reconsider based on your experience.

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:47:04 +0000

I’d just installed my Pinnacle TV in my netbook yesterday. I don’t expect it working fine but it works perfectly in my netbook…! Now I can have my netbook to surf web, watch TV and listening the radio.

By: Vinny

Vinny — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:05:02 +0000

I purchased this (Pinnacle-PCTV HD mini Stick USB 2.0 TV Tuner review) 2 days ago and worked great with my computer. My problem is…. when I open my “Adobe Flash Media Encoder” it does not recognize this Pinnacle-PCTV HD….why??? Or when I want to broadcast it a Justin.tv it does not recognize it. Can anyone help me? Please

Thank you
my email: vanderg12@hotmail.com

By: Del

Del — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:21:14 +0000

My Pinnacle TV for Mac HD mini stick will not tune to my cable for some reason. It works great with the little antanna and picks up all channels around town. Apparently Comcast’s cable outlet from the wall does not provide a digital signal. Is it because it is an analog signal from the wall?

By: afrab_null

afrab_null — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:26:23 +0000

I have a 2nd-hand Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate Stick, purchased about 3-4 weeks ago from a private (?) ebay seller. Like soongate, above, I initially got a pcmloader error. I resolved it by downloading and installing the flash firmware with version 5.4. No pcmloader problems since, and since then I’ve used this unit on:

(1) my old Dell Dimension 2400 desktop, 2.8Ghz with 1Gb RAM, integrated Intel 3D Extreme Graphics (G345?) and WinXP Home,

(2) My son’s Dell Inspiron something-or-other laptop 3.2Ghz with 2Gb RAM, an ATI card (hi-res wide-screen – s.w.e.e.t!) and WinXP Pro,

(3) My daughter’s 64-bit Gateway M-7315U Notebook PC – Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 2GHz, 4GB DDR2, 15.4 WXGA, Vista Home Premium 64 (this machine r.o.c.k.s!),

(4) An IBM ThinkCenter(?) workstation with Intel Core 2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86+1.86, 2Gb RAM and WinXP Pro,

(5) My old Compaq Presario 2100 with 2Ghz CPU, 784Mb RAM, a crappy maximum display resolution, and WinXP Home, and the final kicker:

(6) My old Dell Inspiron 8000 lappy, rockin’ 384 big ‘ol Mb RAM, a 450MHz CPU, an ATI GPU (which apparently offloads most/all graphics processing from the CPU, thank God!), with a small screen but excellent resolution.

“So What?” you say?

This Ultimate Stick has run with almost no glitches at all on all of these machines. I say ‘almost’ because I’ve caught some pixellation on fast-moving action if the picture is at or near full-screen on the lesser machines.

I had never f’d around with any pc tv tuner cards at all before this one. I didn’t get a user’s manual, quick-start guide, installation CD, or any significant guidance, except Pinnacle helping me activate the new flash code. Their on-line help was pretty good, too, albeit a bit slow and repetitive. But on-line help leaves an important artifact: a written transcript of the whole interaction, which lets you go back to the same tech time after time, if need be.

I’m no f’ing genius, and this is *not* rocket surgery. Mostly, I’ve just felt my way along, doing what seemed logical to make things work. Sometimes, what looked like a crash was simply the code trying to flush on-board memory (in the case of the Ultimate Stick) while it’s still being bombarded with data, exacerbated by the user (me) piling up new requests out of impatience. If you wait a few moments, I’ve found that the software almost never crashes, but can appear to lock up for a short time under these circumstances.

Pinnacle and their new masters, Hauppauge Digital, make solid PC TV-type products for a broad range of users. Getting them to work properly may take some fiddling, but once you get understand their capabilities and limitations, they’re pretty freakin’ awesome.