It’s worth a read, but we’ll break it down for you: It more or less rocks, though the software’s “quirky,” like Meg Ryan. The included antenna is well thought-out, and it’s Mac compatible, which, ya know, rules. And the “record for iPod” features are tempting.
The bad news after the jump.
We hope your laptop has some power, because the card itself has no HDTV decoder, so it relies on your laptop’s CPU. While this won’t be much trouble for you MacBook Pro owners, those with regular MacBooks or older laptops may have some trouble. To make it work best, put Sudoku away to watch 24, as you’ll need the muscle.
Pinnacle HDTV Pro Stick Review [Everything USB, via Slashgear]
Hum….I wonder if this is Linux compatible as well. If so, could you then use your PS3 (if you should be so lucky) as a MythTV box?
Link update: http://www.everythingusb.com/pinnacle_pctv_hd_pro_stick.html (The current review link is just to the Photobucket image.) Very cool, though!
I tried this product for about a week, but returned it in favor of DVICO’s FusionHDTV5 Gold USB. Pinnacle’s portable stick works well for the limited over the air HD channels in your area, but the software is very flaky and the provided remote is very limited as compared to other PVR remotes out there. DVICO’s product can get unscrambled HDTV channels (QAM) and uses much much less CPU power because of it’s better decoding algorithms. I hope this helps those of you considering buying this product. Think twice…there are much much better alternatives for the same price and work much better with other software (like MCE, BeyondTV, Media Portal, Nero Home etc)