Black Boxes: Pinnacle PCTV USB

by Larry Lemm
Summer 2001

Pinnacle Systems
(650) 526-1600
www.pinnaclesys.com
$89

The Studio PCTV USB lets users watch TV on their PCs. In addition, this external USB device lets you capture stills of your favorite TV shows (or home videos) and capture moving video at 320x240. There's also an FM radio tuner and a simple editing program that lets you edit video projects.

Hooking Up
Installation is simple: just plug the USB cable into your computer, install the software and connect an antenna or video source (like a VCR or camcorder). The four-part software installation is simple. The bundle includes PCTV Vision software that powers the TV tuner and lets you capture video clips, PCTV Radio software that lets you tune-in to FM broadcasts, Studio editing software for editing clips recorded from TV or home video and the PCTV Assistant program to help you get set up.
After plugging in the hardware, connecting an antenna, and installing the software, we were ready for some good old TV watching.

Tuned-In
All of the device's functions are controlled through the software interface except for snapping screen grabs. To take a snapshot of the TV window the user must press the big red button on top of the unit itself.
Upon launching the TV tuner, a TV window and controller popped onto our computer screen and the tuner immediately scanned the channels to identify those it could receive.
After the autoscan finished, we flipped through the channels one-by-one, then scanned 16 channels at once using the handy thumbnail view. After some quick fiddling with the tuner program, we were watching a Simpsons rerun on the computer.

Featured Features
We were pleased to find that we could change the size of the TV window on the screen, allowing us to watch TV at full-screen or in a tiny window. Even at full-screen the video from the TV tuner looked good, especially from a distance. However, if you're watching from an up-close position, the image looks best when scaled to 320x240 or smaller.
When viewing in a small window, we particularly liked the "always-on-top" feature that kept the TV window on top of other windows as we used various applications on our computer.
Another feature of the unit is its ability to take screen grabs and record video clips to the hard drive. Shoppers should be aware that the USB PCTV captures video only at a maximum of 320x240.
Grabbing high quality stills from TV or video is easy. Just switch the unit to Camera mode and click the big red button on top of the unit. Images can then be saved to your hard drive or E-mailed to friends.

In the End
Pinnacle's Studio PCTV USB is an easy and effective way to get TV to your PC. It's affordable and not too difficult to install. If you want to watch the news while you work or your soap while you surf, Pinnacle's little box may be just the device that you've been looking for.

Smart Specs
Codec: Indeo
Inputs: S-video, Composite, Stereo Mini, Coax TV, Coax Radio, USB
Outputs: Composite, Mini Audio
Minimum System Requirements: Pentium 166, 32MB RAM, CD-ROM, Sound Card (DirectX 6.1), Video Card (DirectX 6.1), 100MB free disk space
Recommended System: Pentium II, 64MB RAM, CD-ROM, Separate Capture Drive, 200MB free disk space