Pinnacle HD TV PCI Card: Great, Low-Cost HD TV Solution

INTRODUCTION

I’ve had an interest in HD television for some time, long before the sets became affordable. Last year, I bought an ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI card and this past January, I bought a 26” Westinghouse HD TV. Interestingly, it took having the Westinghouse to see what the ATI HD card was lacking, and that was better reception – that is, the ability to pick up more HD and digital channels. (In all fairness, though, the HD TV and its antenna sit near my living room window, and my computer with the HD card and antenna sit further inside the room.)

I bought the ATI card sometime last summer and have been disappointed by its performance. Its reception of channels was only passable, but even worse, the software package that came with it was amazingly slow, limiting ... and buggy. The DVR recording application never worked from the get-go, and attempts to get answers through ATI’s web site went ignored.

On a lark, I decided to try a device I’d bought for my notebook computer some time back – a portable USB-based HD stick and built-in antenna. I’d had some success with this outfit, but as with the ATI PCI card, channel reception could be spotty at times.

I asked myself why would one device be better at picking up digital channels than others. It occurred to me that the quality of the tuner would be the determining factor. Also, I figured that if Pinnacle’s USB receiver was okay, a PCI card would be even better.

So in a rather pleasant green package at my nearby Micro Center, I plunked down $80 for Pinnacle’s HD TV PCI card. This card, by the way, runs about $50 less than Pinnacle’s own HD TV Pro Stick. The difference is that the PCI card has to be installed in one of the PCI slots inside the computer, while the USB stick simply plugs into an available USB port. But by all means, don’t let the fact that you’ll have to open up your computer stop you from getting this stick. To begin with, computers are better designed and accessing the PCI slots is easier. And the final results are well worth it.

One of my prime motivations for getting an HD TV card is that I’d like to be able to record HD video and play it back on my HD TV. I expect that DVR’s that record to Blu-Ray discs are a couple of years off, and I don’t feel like waiting. So I figured if I can at least have the video capture part of the equation resolved, so much the better. And this card does very well.


FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The Pinnacle HD TV PCI card comes in another one of those plastic blister packs that’s impossible to open without a pair of scissors, so be sure to have a pair handy. (When are manufacturers going to learn not to infuriate the consumer before they’ve opened your product?)

Inside the package, you get the HD TV PCI card, a composite jack plug, an antenna (a small, wire-based one), a CD containing the device driver and the PC TV application (which lets you watch TV, record, etc.), a CD with Pinnacle Studio 10 (QuickStart edition, a video editing application), and documentation.

The quick start guide is nicely printed, has illustrations, and is not in nine languages.


INSTALLATION

There’s really not much to installing the HD TV PCI card, unless you’re extremely squeamish (or lazy) about opening your computer cabinet. The most you’ll need is a Philips’ head screwdriver and if you’re really lucky you won’t even need that. I have an eMachines T5082 tower system running Windows Vista Home Edition that uses screwless clamps to secure PCI cards in place, so the process of securing the card in the slot was as simple as: unscrewing the cabinet door, lifting the PCI card clamp, slipping the HD TV PCI card in place, closing the PCI card clamp, and rescrewing the cabinet door in place. The whole process took five minutes, if even. The card fit snugly in the slot so this was a snap.

Next, you power on the system and Windows takes a few moments to start locating the device driver. At this point I placed the device driver CD in my CD/DVD drive and it found the driver and on went the installation. Several minutes later the system asked for a reboot, which I did.

I was eager to try viewing and recording HD signals so I deferred installing the video editing software, Pinnacle Studio 10. Instead, I started up the PC TV application and tuned to a college basketball game on CBS at the time.


STARTUP

Keep in mind that the HD TV PCI card is not a TV – it’s a tuner. That means that it takes some time for the software to be loaded and for the signal to be captured. I timed the startup of the PC TV application – it’s about 40 seconds. If you’re ever in a hurry to record something after dashing home, you may miss a few seconds. (And don’t forget that 40 seconds is on top of the time it takes for your computer to power up.)


CHANNEL SCAN

You may choose to scan analog or digital channels. You may also scan for FM stations if you like (I didn’t try that, because that’s not why I bought the card).

The initial channel scan takes less than ten minutes. The analog channel scan (which you don’t have to do, and won’t need to do after February 2009 when all analog signals go dead) goes quickly. The digital channel scan takes most of the scan time.



PICTURE AND SOUND

The picture produced by the Pinnacle HD TV PCI card is bright and colorful. I didn’t need to make any adjustments to contrast or sharpness. Sound, I had no complaints either.

Since the device driver software installs a codec for wide-screen video, I was able to play back using Windows Media Player. And the video looks good, although I wonder if it’s recording at 29.97 frames per second or whether there’s any reduction in what I’ll call the fluidity of motion as a result of recording to a hard drive. I would imagine that the faster your CPU, the better your performance will be. In no way is this a complaint; it’s just an observation.


PC TV APPLICATION

The PC TV application (for viewing) shows the signal strength, the channel ID, and (because of the digital nature of TV signals) the current program on and what’s schedule to come on next. Instead of using the enclosed wire antenna, I bought a “rabbit ears” RCA antenna ($10, Best Buy) and plugged that into the card instead. With the CBS channel, the signal was at 100%. Can’t ask for better than that.

If you’re watching a wide-screen HD channel (16:9), the frame resizes to the wide screen aspect. Standard channels (4:3) resize the frame to the standard screen aspect.

Changing channels is a little slow. Not sure if this is a hardware issue or a design issue. Would like to see Pinnacle adjust this in a patch or future release.

Unfortunately, it does not appear this application has a timer. You’ll have to look elsewhere for scheduled TV recording solutions.

However, it does appear to have support for Direct-To-DVD recording. It’s buried in the Settings screen, but if you look on the Capture screen at the bottom, you’ll see it.

One especially important thing to keep in mind when recording HD TV programs - they eat up a LOT of hard drive space. The 26 minutes of the NCAA basketball game I recorded on CBS ate up 2.9 GB. Do the math and that works out to about 6.7 GB per hour. So if you plan on recording HD programs, plan on replacing your hard drive with a larger one, or getting a USB 2.0 external hard drive. (Naturally, such large file sizes will lend themselves very nicely to the 25 GB Blu-Ray blank discs that run about $20 for two.)


VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE

Pinnacle Studio 10 is not the best video editing software you’ll ever use, but it was nice that Pinnacle chose to include it. This is the full version of the software, minus some of the bonus extras found in a retail version.

Vista users will have to go to Pinnacle’s web site (www.pinnaclesys.com) and download the 10.8 patch to resolve issues associated with Vista. There is a patch for XP also, but if you can start the program in XP, this patch is optional, I’d say. You have to have the patch to run Studio 10 on Vista.

Studio 10 has facilities for importing video, editing it, adding titles and special effects, and creating an output disc (CD or DVD). Editing video is a bit awkward, but not impossible. Rendering edited video doesn’t set any speed records either. My suggestion: get yourself a copy of Ulead VideoStudio 11 if you plan on doing anything more serious. Otherwise, you’ll like Studio 10 well enough.


COMPOSITE JACK

I tried sending a video signal through the composite jack (the red, white and yellow plugs that are ubiquitous these days) and was able to view and record the picture without problems, through Ulead VideoStudio 11. Many video editing applications have video capture options where you can select your video source. If you plan on recording from the composite jack instead of the (live) TV tuner, be sure to remember to set the video source to “composite” or else you’ll wonder why you’re looking at live TV.


FINAL VERDICT

In the past, when I was doing research on video products, one thing I noticed in comments from users of Pinnacle video software was that their technical support was lousy. I have not had to use their tech support, but I hope they’ve had their ears to the ground and have bucked up their reputation and delivery in that area.

The card and hardware drivers are certified for Windows Vista, but Studio 10, the video editing application, requires a special patch to be usable.

Considering I was more pro-ATI in the past, discovering the Pinnacle HD TV PCI card was a very pleasant surprise. The reasonable $80 street price means that folks not quite ready to invest in a full-size HD TV receiver costing hundreds of dollars can get a low-cost taste of how dazzling and fun HD TV really is, with a decent video editing application to boot.