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Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs

Did we ever tell you that we love TV? We do, we really do and always have, and it just keeps getting better and better—and more accessible for everyone everywhere—TV to the max!

And loving TV as much as we do you can imagine we’re always interested in seeing new ones and new technologies. This week we got to look at a couple of new units from Pinnacle and got a pleasant surprise.

Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro

There are a lot of PCTV USB tuners around—many of them work, a lot don’t. So it’s with a bit of trepidation that we unpack a new kit to take it through its paces. Pinnacle has been in this PCTV business since 1986 and has over 850 people working on various video products. The company was acquired by Avid Technology in August 2005 (for approximately 6.2 million shares of stock and $71.3 million in cash). So if any firm knows anything about PCTV it’s got to be Pinnacle.

However, as mentioned, we’ve tried a lot of these devices and, as some of you know, done a few reports on the market. Mostly we’ve been underwhelmed and disappointed. But Pinnacle promised we could watch live high-quality digital HD and SD TV without service fees from anywhere on our laptop with full support for both analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) reception. And, we could instantly transform our PC into a personal digital video recorder (DVR). Part of the magic in this device is a Dibcom “two-in-one” DIB7070-P chipset that includes a tuner and demodulator. The chipset combines a dual-band tuner (VHF and UHF) with a DVB-T demodulator in one package.

Figure 1. Pinnacle’s new PCTV HD pro dual mode USB-based TV tuner module. (Source: JPR)

So we opened the case and plugged it, and inserted the setup CD into the PC (see photo).

The multi-band and standard tuner is plugged into the USB connector on the side, the remote is standing on end, next to the (included) whip antenna—the only thing not showing is the mini-USB connector that fans out to three cables, one for S-video, one for 9mm audio, and one for composite video inputs to the tuner module—a lotta stuff going on in that little module.

The installation, although a bit long, was flawless. The tuner was set up, the DVR function set up, and then you’re invited to download a free EPG. Overall the installation took about an hour.

If you start with the Settings icon, it brings up the TVcenter Pro Setting box and lets you set your preferences for TV channels, radio channels, EPG, capture, timeshifting, display, the RC, hardware, and it has an information section, which contains a benchmark. Run it to see if your system is up to par. Here’s what we got on Jon’s laptop.

Figure 2. Test of Jon’s laptop—looks OK, doesn’t it? It’s not. (Source: JPR)

During the installation it checks for signal strength for the analog and digital channels in your area, as well as Internet radio. And like any good installation program, it checks for updates.

When setting up the system, clicking on Timeshifiting will let you decide if you want to record what you’re watching automatically anytime you bring up the PCTV, and the maximum amount of time you want to save—this is a serious hit on the disk, and so we did not set it up to auto record, and we limited the storage time to 30 minutes. In addition to the basic storage space, Timeshifiting is also a hit on the system because it has to buffer and then disk write, and, as you shall see, resources are at a premium.

After the EPG downloaded, we were ready to watch some TV. As mentioned, the tuner can receive (in the U.S.) analog NTSC and digital ATSC. And it can receive 720p digital TV as well as 1080i digital TV, which is broadcast in MPEG-2. Remember that.

We were ready and so we tried running it. The best thing that can be said is that it worked, but it was not very responsive. Every action (changing channels, changing from a window to full screen, etc.) took a very long time. The disk was active a lot and the Task Master reported 70% to 80% of the CPU was being used even if the system was left alone and you simply watched OTA NTSC analog TV.

Figure 3. CPU utilization for analog TV. (Source: JPR)

When a digital channel was selected, the CPU utilization went to saturation and nothing else could be done. And, as Pinnacle points out in the user guide, switching from analog to digital channel or vice versa on a hybrid tuner hardware takes much longer than from digital to digital or analog to analog.

We couldn’t get the remote control to work at all, and the audio would sometimes break up—Jon’s up-to-now wonderful laptop just wasn’t up to the task. And if you note in the setup picture, it registers as a 1.86-GHz Pentium M. Pinnacle says (on the box and in the documentation) for laptop users to achieve a good HD experience, a Pentium M processor with 1.7 GHz or higher is recommended.

They give other precautions such as making sure that the processor is running at full speed and that, in some cases, the laptop needs to be connected to the power supply or the “Power scheme” needs to be adjusted accordingly. So, as we can report that it did actually work, it wasn’t a pleasant experience or useful. Part of the problem is the MPEG-2 decode of the digital signal, and the writing to the disk.

Darth Vader to the rescue

Here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs we have an AMD Quad FX. It’s big black monster of a machine we call Darth Vader, and it’s our supercomputer with GeForce 8800s in it; nothing can stop it.

Darth Vader has two dual-core AMD Athlon 64 FX 74 processors and 4 GBytes of RAM. We put the little Pinnacle tuner in it and tried it. No problem. Darth Vader has a 20-inch 1600 x 1200 display and we ran the HD 10801 channels full screen, with the Task Master, and watched it. One of the 3 GHz processors gave up about 20 to 30 percent of its time to deal with the multi-mode hybrid tuner, the other three talked to each other, they were bored.

Figure 4. Darth Vader delivers 1080i OTA HD TV smoothly. (Source: JPR)

Now everything worked, and worked well. The remote control changed channels, could turn the tuner and viewer on or off, start and stop recordings, and playback recordings.

Although we didn’t test it (just ran out of time) the unit can also record shows directly to a DVD and/or in the destination file format of choice (i.e. iPod, PSP, DivX, etc.) This is something we’re going to play with and see if we can get the new Dr. Who series on the PSP or Kathleen’s Creative Zen player.

The unit can also capture from most consumer devices with analog outputs (e.g. VCRs, camcorders, DVD players, etc.) and then you can edit and enhance with the included Pinnacle Studio QuickStart software. (Kathleen is testing the new Pinnacle Studio 11 now.)

And Pinnacle says to capture from HDTV to DivX, PSP, or iPod formats, very high system performance is required (Dual Core systems or above); this is not supported on many PCs. If this is the case with your PC, use the “native format” setting instead for HDTV recording
instead.

Last but far from least, the PCTV HD Pro offers support for Microsoft Media Center Edition environment, and Pinnacle has an MCE upgrade kit including a Microsoft-compatible MCE remote, IR receiver, and IR blaster that is sold separately.

ATSC is now available in most parts of the U.S. However, ATSC reception is dependent on many factors. The provided antenna will allow reception in areas where there is a good ATSC signal. In regions or rooms where the signal is not strong, an amplified rooftop antenna will be required. It is generally not possible to receive an ATSC signal while enroute (e.g., in a car or on a train).

The PCTV HD stick employs an Xceive XC3028 tuner with a LG DT3303 ATSC demod behind it and uses an Empia 2882 USB controller:

You want one, right? Well, you can have one for just $129.99, or less if you shop around a bit. We like it a lot, and it may be an excuse for Jon to get a new laptop.

What do we think?

It’s a clever design, amazingly compact, reasonably priced, and with the right PC works as advertised. To get the most out of it, that is to watch digital TV, you’ve got to have a good amount of PC power to run the decoder and codecs, and even more if you want to use transcoding to make a file for a handheld device. Also, DVD burning requires some horsepower, and not everyone has a Darth Vader. However, the installed based of high-performance PCs has been steadily rising and that will be the limitation or TAM for this and similar devices. It’s not for all, and so we give it a slightly up thumbs.

AMD just introduced their ATI TV Wonder 600, which looks a lot like Pinnacle’s and has an IR remote control, A/V input adapter for video capture from a camcorder or VCR, and, an electronic programming guide. So, with two suppliers (can Hauppauge be far behind?) this officially becomes a category and you can expect to see them as stocking stuffers and hanging from racks at Fry’s and Best Buy.

PCTV to go

We told you we like TV, and we do. But we like our TV, not that crap they serve you in hotels. Here at Mt. Tiburon we have three satellite DVRs, and an equal number of HDTV screens. We’re spoiled, we know it, and we’re happy about it. But duty calls and on the road we must go, and go, and go. And we do go, all the while missing our colleagues, cats, and most of all our TV shows.

A while back Slingbox introduced the idea of tapping into your home DVR and shipping the shows on it over the Internet to you wherever you are in the world—this way of accessing content is known as placeshifting. Cool idea, and one that has caught on. Recently Pinnacle has entered the game, making this technology a genuine category now. Their offering is called PCTV To Go, and they sent us one to see if we could break it. We tried, we couldn’t; the damn thing just works.

We’ve tried other over-the-Internet devices, and they are, to say the least, problematic—getting the IP set up, dealing with getting the DNS and DHCP settings right, and IP address conflicts worked out as well as the WEP and WPA. It has been a PITA plain and simple. Not so with this puppy. In fact, we can honestly say this was one of the best out-of-the-box experiences we’ve had in a long time, and certainly the best one involving the network.

The box comes with a RJ45 connector and two small whip antennas. It looks a lot like a Cisco/Linksys wireless router for 802.11g communications. There are also jacks for component input (Y,Pb, Pr, up to 1080i), composite video (YUV), S-video (Y/C), Coax RF (antenna) and L-R stereo jacks; the EU version has a SCART input connector. Into these jacks you plug the output of your DVR. Since our Component output was already being used, we chose the component and stereo inputs (yellow, red, white). Then we connected the IR blaster and routed it to the IR window on the front of the DVR.

Figure 5. PCTV to go installed and operational in less than a half hour. (Source: JPR)

We popped the setup CD in the computer and the wizard led us through the process, finding our Internet data and eventually getting to the point where it asked what box was it was connected to (brand and model) and from that determined what the RC functions were. The whole process took less than a half hour and worked flawlessly.

During the initial step of the setup process it advised us to let it check for an update, we did, and it found one. PCTV to go version 1.1 was downloaded, which includes HD support.

It was done and we were ready to test, on our laptops, Jon’s HP nw8240 1.86-GHz Pentium M and Kathleen’s Toshiba Libretto 1.2-GHz Pentium M 753 ULV. In setting up the second laptop, we had to say it was owned by the person who had the first laptop. This can be overcome in the advanced mode setup if it’s important to you. We didn’t care. You can actually have up to five client machines, which is a feature none of the competitive boxes offer.

We were now ready to watch TV, remotely. Only one PC can watch at a time, again not a problem. Our first test was to use Jon’s machine on a wired connection. It worked flawlessly. Next we tried it on Kathleen’s machine
wirelessly.

We opened up the viewer and there was the TV show our DVR was currently looking at. Next we brought up the remote control—see photo below.

Figure 6. Pinnacle’s PCTV to go Client side remote TV viewer with remote control module. (Source: JPR)	Figure 7. The remote control and view of the home DVR system on a laptop. (Source: JPR)

The remote isn’t perfect and requires a small adjustment, but it is easy to learn to deal with. The photo in Figure 7 shows viewing the DVR remotely. This is exactly how the screen would look if we were sitting in front of the TV at home.

This is a very useful device if you’ve recorded something while traveling and just can’t wait to see it before you get home. There’s no set-up or monthly service fees involved—you have complete control of your home system. However, if someone at home is watching you can get into a battle over who has control. In fact, you both do, only the person at home has faster control. From the time you press one of the buttons (with the mouse on the client screen) until you get the desired effect can take up to half a minute depending on your connection.

The system sells for $249, and maybe a little less if you shop around.

What do we think?

As mentioned earlier, this was one of the best out-of-the-box experiences we’ve had, and especially so given that it has to deal with the vagaries of the Internet, routers, and TCIP. The results are also very satisfying and you really can watch your home DVR while away. The price is reasonable, but not for everyone, being just under that magic consumer $300 line, so only people who really want this will buy it. But, we don’t see too many impulse buys as was the case with WebTV. Nonetheless, for those of us who do want this capability, this product is a winner, and we give it a full thumbs up.

Figure 27: Nokia’s N95 camera phone. (We couldn’t take a picture of the phone—well, maybe using a mirror we could—so we used one of Nokia’s photos.) (Source: Nokia)

Picture credits

All the photos in this week’s Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs stories about PCTV were made with a 5-Mpixel camera that happens to have a multi-band mobile phone attached to it—the Nokia N95. It has a built-in flash, autofocus, and even Carl Zeiss optics. Videos can also be recorded at VGA resolution at 30fps, and with digital image stabilization. There’s a TV-out function on the N95 and it also supports MP3, AAC, M4A, and WMA music playback through its built-in stereo speakers or headphones via a 3.5mm headset jack. An FM radio is also included in the N95.

The images can be easily downloaded to the PC (via Nokia’s PC suite) and, unlike some other camera phones, doesn’t require you to download them via the operator’s network (where they charge a fee). However, you can upload to the web for photo gallery and blogging systems.

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