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There are 3 parts
to this review, please use the pulldown below to browse sections or simply
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How well does it work
The performance of this device is heavily system dependant. Please note
Pinnacle Studio's recommends a CPU of 1800 MHZ and above to use this device
to it maximum potential. A secondary hard drive should be considered for
two reasons. First, the hard drive is constantly being accessed for both
time shifting and recording. Secondly, it requires a mass amount of storage
space for recording. I would imagine a T.V buff dedicating no less then
80 GIGS of storage to record his or her favorite daily T.V. shows. Even
though the device is USB 1.1 backwards compatible I can say, without a doubt,
that USB 2.0 connectivity is required to achieve the devices maximum potential.
Some of the things I noticed using USB1.1 were slow channel switching and
video-to-audio lag (the two weren't in synch with each other). It looked
as if I was watching a foreign movie with voices dubbed in over the original
language (i.e. Godzilla). I did, however, manage to get around this problem
by enabling time shift, which acts as a buffer with the use of the hard
drive. Picture quality is up to par with a normal television. I wouldn't
plan on watching much video in full screen mode unless you can sit further
away from your computer monitor; it's like sitting 2 feet away from your
television set. The graininess and lack of detail really stands out. |
| The software bundle included is very straightforward for ease of use.
Scheduling a recording session works similar to a standard VCR. Simply select
a channel, time slot, and day and it is good to go. To add further convenience
it offers addition modes of daily, weekly, and once which will allow you
to just set it and forget it. |
Click for larger image |
Click for larger image |
Video record quality can be easily adjusted from the settings menu. You
can quickly adjust the capture format with a click of the mouse or set customized
settings to your likings. This device maximum capture size is 720 X 480
and a bit rate of 9.5 Mb/sec which is outstanding! |
| Pinnacle Studios opted to include one additional utility named TRex. It
is designed to help the user convert popular video formats into various
other popular formats to help save hard drive space and reduce transfer
times. I converted several SVCD quality videos to AVIMEPG4 and they turned
out flawless. During the conversation process I do recommend you shut down
as many services and process as possible. I also recommend not doing much
of anything on your computer; if at all possible just walk away until it
is finished. Pixellation may occur as your system resources spike if you
do continue to work while converting. |
Click for larger image |
Click for larger image |
Pictured left shows the PCTV Deluxe channel surfing capability. Just
like hi-end TV's, this features lets you select what you want to watch
without having to manually go up and down in the channel selection to
see what's on TV. You can see that it produces a thumbnail (still image)
of every channel. At this point, all you have to do is click on the image
of the channel you want watch and it comes up. At this point, all you
have to do is click on the image of the channel you want watch and it
comes up.
In addition to the use of Pinnacles Studio's software bundle, we attempted
to get the capture device to work with Adobe Premiere and were unsuccessful.
The device appears at this time to be proprietary. I don't consider this
to be a huge disadvantage because this product is marketed toward enthusiasts,
not professionals.
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what kind of quality you can get recording real time video on the fly.
I will say it works very well; however, some channels are naturally better
then others depending on the signal quality. Because these results will
vary from end user to end user, we decided to record on the fly from the
best possible source; S-video from a home DVD player. This gives a better
representation of the kind of quality this device is capable of outputting.
Since images (or in this case moving images) are worth a thousand words,
click on the images below to download the sample video clips. Keep in
mind both videos were recorded in SVCD quality. For those who are bandwidth
challenged, Pinnacle's included TRex utility was used to reduce the size
of the clips below. It is compressed using MPEG4, so you may have to download
the codec depending on your player.
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| -CPU AMD
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| 2600+ and below | |
| 2700+ and above | |
| AMD MP | |
| Opteron | |
| Athlon 64 | |
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| -CPU Intel
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| P4/XE 2.4 & up | |
| P4/XE 2.2 & down | |
| Celeron | |
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| -Memory DDR | |
| -Memory pc133 | |
-Hard Drive IDE
(60G and lower) | |
-Hard Drive IDE
(80G and higher) | |
| -CD/DVD/CDRWs | |
| -nVidia video cards | |
| ATI video cards | |
| -LCD monitors: 15in | |
| -LCD monitors: 17in | |
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AMD Motherboards
XP:nForce2,VIA KT600
Opteron: nForce3, AMD8000
64: nForce3, AMD8000, K8T
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Intel Motherboards
Latest Chipset: 875P
w/Graphics: 865G
VIA: P4X
ATI: 9100 IGP
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