Compared to the Aevoe Mobix we tested a while back the Pinnacle PCTV Freeview stick is a much smaller package equivalent of a slightly oversized USB memory stick. It has an LED's to indicate power and apart from its plain white exterior the only other design feature is the tight fitting USB cap to cover the connector, which could be easily lost. The RF cable connects to the outer edge of the PCTV USB stick with a solid tight grip, this then in turn connects to the small supplied aerial which looks a bit like a mag mount antenna used by the local mini cab firm.

Having connected our little kit to a equally small Sony Vaio notebook it was time to install the drivers and Pinnacle show centre software, just as well we'd been to the supermarket and stocked up on supplies as this took nearly 20 minutes! OK so the little Sony has only a 1.2ghz processor but 20 minutes is a long time to wait for a bit of kit to be ready to use.

Finally everything looked set, green light on the USB stick, recognised by the notebook and fire up the show centre config application. First up we sent it to perform a scan of all available Freeview channels, something you have to do on any new set-top box, it took quite sometime and then didn't return any channels. So as with the Mobix unit we resorted to hanging the aerial outside the window and re ran the scan, finally some channels after another 5 minute wait. There is an option to get channel logos added via a broadband connection but this also seemed to take ages so we skipped it.

So now a chance to use Pinnacles cut down TV viewer and our first sight of the PCTV USB sticks pictures, at first everything looked OK watching BBC1 and Sky news but prolonged viewing started to show stutters and stalls in both audio and video. Fearing that our attempts at aerial dangling were flawed we decided to switch to our fixed outdoor aerial which is on a 20ft pole above the building, much to our surprise while the stalling decreased it was still there and this is the signal we use in all our Freeview decoders without issue.

This was and indeed still is most concerning and makes the Aevoe Mobix look very good in comparison, while the images in general were good and looked great on our notebook we just couldn't live with the constant stalls and stutters which on the main aerial were about very 60 seconds. We wondered if our small notebook could be the issue even though its Pentium P4 1.2Ghz processor was more than the recommended hardware level, so after installing the system on a desktop 3.0Ghz machine we repeated the tests. Indeed the stalls were greatly reduced again and using task manager on our notebook we were able to determine that the Pinnacle TV applications were together eating all the processor.

Having established a picture that would be prepared to watch on a more powerful desktop PC we repeated the tests with the supplied antenna. However the more powerful PC couldn't help the woefully under performing antenna. Again we were unable to reliably scan for channels or display them without all sorts of on screen artefacts.

Using the 3.0ghz PC to test the rest of the features  rather stinted our review as it seemed almost academic to test the recording PVR style features which can capture the DTT signals in either Mpeg 1/2 or Divx, plus you can also generate screen captures.

 There is even a Sky+ style TV delay which can be set to start automatically when the application is fired up allowing you to rewind live TV. The Pinnacle TV centre also comes with a nifty little remote control which is about the size of a credit card, this beams commands via IR to the PCTV stick and can perform the unusual channel  and volume selection. This does all work very well and would make a great pairing with a reliable video replay on a laptop preferably a truly transportable one not a desktop replacement model.

On sale now the Pinnacle PCTV USB stick retails for around £50 which is well priced even against the mass market Freeview decoders, it is a great size and is bundled with some very useable software. However we cannot recommend it for two reasons, firstly the antenna supplied is just not up to the job of picking up DTT signals even in a good area. Secondly the video stability seems compromised on ultra mobile PC's that have processors towards the lower end of the PCTV sticks specification.

It's a real shame as we prefer the form factor of the Pinnacle Freeview stick to the Aevoe Mobix but Pinnacle device unlike the Mobix fails to get the basic decoding job done.

Published - 04/04/2006

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