Just brought Pinnacle PCTV HD Card at Woot

[TechBill]

Woot launching a new HD card the Pinnacle PCTV HD Card and I just brought one.

I wonder if it will work in SageTV. Currenly I am using PVR500 and wanted to add a HD tuner to it.

Thanks
Bill

[craigdthom]

I recently came across an add for the Pinnacle PCTV HD Card for about $50 on http://woot.com ..

The specs report the card can encode in MPEG2 as well as DivX

Is anyone using this card with any success .. the price looks great .. the features sound really great, but does the card work with SAGE?

I checked the list of tuners and Sage only list support for the
Pinnacle PCTV Dual DVB-T Pro PCI

If anyone has any knowledge on this .. please update me

Thanks in advance
Craig

[craigdthom]

Bill please keep us posted on this one ...

Do you know if this card uses hardware or software encoding ... Could not find much info on the web

-Craig

[David G]

Nobody's using this card yet, it's new and being launched via woot.

I would also like to know if there's a way to figure out whether or not the card will work with sage though. There isn't a single Pinnacle in the list of compatible cards for sagetv's hardware requirements.

[up2ng]

HDTV tuning in just file transferring, no encoding.

[David G]

Pfewww.

Glad I didn't pull the trigger.

[Wirenut]

Hey, I bought the Pinnacle card on Woot.com yesterday. I figured I'd give it a try. Hopefully, it works. I'm currently using a PVR500 and also would like an HD tuner for OTA or Clear QAM cable.

When I get it, I'll post my findings.

For the price, I don't have too much fear.

Peace,

Wirenut

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by Wirenut

Hey, I bought the Pinnacle card on Woot.com yesterday. I figured I'd give it a try. Hopefully, it works. I'm currently using a PVR500 and also would like an HD tuner for OTA or Clear QAM cable.

When I get it, I'll post my findings.

For the price, I don't have too much fear.

Peace,

Wirenut

Same here .. I purchased it to give a try and see if it'll work and hopefully it does work and also have Closed Caption support too.

I am plan on using it for OTA HD and I will also report my finding too.

50 bux for a HD card isn't all too bad and there still a chance it'll be supported in SageTV later if not now.

Bill

[Radar]

I pulled the trigger figuring I could always use it as another analog tuner if it didn't pick up QAM HD channels. Then I found out it uses software encoding for analog, which my 1ghz sagetv box wouldn't like. Fortunately they were able to cancel my order before it went out.

Good luck to those who ordered though, I hope it works for you and I can feel envious!

[BoogerPEZ]

I'll have to post my results when I get my card installed tonight.

I have reports that this thing eats up system resources. We'll see how it works on my P4 3 ghz/1 gb system.

[Wirenut]

I got mine yesterday, and dropped it in.

Sage shows it in the setup tuners section.... I haven't patched any signal too it yet or configured it yet. Tonight, I'll tweak around with it.

I did however use the FM Radio tuner with the FM Radio STVI... and without an antenna it grabbed like twelve stations and I live in the sticks. Perdy kewl.

I'll post my findings this weekend.

Wirenut

[Wirenut]

So, from the Pinnacle website, you have to download a beta version of their TV control software that enables the Clear QAM reception. ...apparently this loads some new drivers too....

So after doing that, I have like found 300 channels. ...I'm sure many are scrambled... But, although Sage recognizes the tuner, it doesn't scan anything... At this point nothing in Sage yet. I will read more of how to use QAM tuning in Sage.

I shall try again tomorrow night and maybe if I have time Sunday.


Tried again....

Nope. I think the drivers are still very much in the Beta stage for Clear QAM support, and I don't think SageTV 6.2 is picking up the Clear QAM tuner as listed in the functional, but crappy, Pinnacle TV software. I think it's going to be awhile. If anybody does get this thing tuning up Clear QAM in Sage.... Drop a line here. I'm kinda at a loss for options at this point.


Wirenut

[mcaron1234]

Anybody got this thing working as a analog tuner, at least. I'm debating whether or not I should put this in my sage server.

Thanks,

Matt

[Wirenut]

It'll tune analog, but doesn't have a hardware encoder built in... so it'll do software encoding and chew up some cpu time.

I just wanted to use it for QAM and then there's no need for an onboard encoder as it's a compressed stream natively and can just be stored directly.

It does seem to work okay on my machine with software encoding, but it's on a P4 3.4Ghz and 2Gig ram.... so... I dunno... I think I'm gonna use it with my line up for analog until the QAM drivers get further developed and Sage picks up support.

The Pinnacle software does the HD clear QAM tuning and looks nice... I'm sure once the drivers are tweaked and it's working with WinMCE, then Sage will follow.

I will say, the picture quality blows away my PVR500.

Wirenut.

[BoogerPEZ]

Finally got my card installed and everything running.

The analog tuner works great. Picks up my comcast stations just great in sage without much cpu load. (3.2 Ghz P4, 1 Gb Ram)
The Pinnacle software also found ~300 digital stations even though I'm on the basic analog package. Most of those are PPV channels but I do get all the network broadcasts and a whole bunch of digital music and digital radio stations.

Unfortunately I can only tune these consistently with the Pinnacle software. When I try to add channels to Sage I end up with the same channel on all the added stations and the digital artifacts are horrible. When I scan for digital channels I see nothing fom the detected digital stations even though Sage sees ~300.

I hear that many of the HD cards have locked drivers that only the manufacturer's software can use. But if MCE is supported Sage is supported as well since they both use the same style of unlocked drivers to access the tuner.

So here's to hoping that Pinnacle develops MCE support for this card.

[mcaron1234]

Has anybody managed to get this card working for QAM in sage? I tried it for the analog cable and the quality of the recordings was not good enough.

Thanks,

Matt

[Wirenut]

It seemed to only really work with the crappy Pinnacle software. Couldn't get anything to tune clear QAM with it other than their software.

Pinnacle website has nothing to offer... check their forum... or the Woot forum about this card.... peeps is pissed.

Fifty bucks wasted. I usually have a hell of a hang over after blasting off a 50 dollar bill. I dunno...

I just boxed it back up and gave it to my nephew to tinker with...

Maybe someday there'll be better, more universal drivers for the card...

Chime on in, if you got this working with Sage. I'd love to hear how it happened.

Peace,

Wirenut

[m2cupcar]

anybody get this card working for HD, or did everybody give up?

The beta link is still on the pinnacle site- don't know if it's a new beta or not.

[Wirenut]

It's the same. People have been waiting several months for a MCE driver set for QAM. I gave up. Pulled the card out. Put it in a box.

Wirenut

[m2cupcar]

that's too bad- thanks wirenut