As chips, boards, and other components get smaller, so do the products that they make up. The Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick is a good example of this. It’s a USB stick that allows you to view HD OTA (over the air) programming from any USB capable device. So now you can turn your laptop (with capable HD screen) into an HDTV device. I’m thinking that road warriors and vacationers would especially like this kind of device.
Here’s the spec rundown:
Minimum System Requirements
- Windows® XP with SP2 or Windows Vista (32 bit)
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, Pentium M 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 processor (for HDTV reception, a Pentium D or Pentium Dual Core or equivalent AMD Athlon 64 processor is recommended)
- RAM: Windows XP – 256MB RAM (512MB recommended)
Windows Vista – 512 MB (1GB recommended) - DirectX® 9 or higher compatible graphics card (64 MB real memory required for HD)
- DirectX 9 or higher compatible sound card (Creative® Audigy® or M-Audio® recommended)
- 1 GB of disk space to install software (20 GB recommended for TV recording)
- USB 2.0 port
- DVD-ROM drive to install software
Hardware Specifications
Inputs & Outputs:
- TV antenna input (F-connector)
- S-Video (via included adapter)
- Composite Video (RCA, via included adapter)
- Stereo audio (3.5mm headphone plug, via included adapter)
TV Standards
- ATSC (HDTV up to 1080i, SDTV)
- NTSC (cable, over the air)
Package Contents
- USB 2.0 TV tuner for ATSC/NTSC reception
- Mini remote control including batteries
- Portable telescopic high-gain antenna
- A/V adapter cable
- USB extender cable
- Printed QuickStart guide
- CD-ROM with Pinnacle TVCenter Pro software
- CD-ROM with Pinnacle Studio QuickStart software
hmm i want this stick ( interesting how powerful is it)
The antenna is pretty good. The unit itself offloads encoding to the computer, so you need to heed the hardware requirements. Should do the trick for most users.
holy cow that’s cool. does anyone know what it costs?
it’s about $130 retail.
wow! that’s a handy little device!