Just brought Pinnacle PCTV HD Card at Woot

[mikejaner]

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

In my opinion, Pinnacle is a horrible company. I have purchased a number of products from them, each time forgiving the past lack of support, only to be burned. The last one was the "PCTV HD Wireless" aka, "Hava Wireless HD".
Take a look at their forums, and you will see what I mean. No responses to basic questions for days, if not weeks. And their driver releases are so few and far between that you buy new hardware by the time you realize they have released something new. If I were anybody reading this, I would avoid this company at all costs.

[holmtech]

I have the same tuner from Woot! I had it working with the Pinnacle software with my Comcast service back in December (QAM). Now I've canceled the cable service and am using an HD antenna. This Pinnacle card works better than my Dvico Fusion 5 Gold card. This seccond install with SageTV I had reformatted my hard drive so to get the card to work I simply installed it and let Windows install the drivers automatically. Works great!

[m2cupcar]

whoa homtech! You have this card working with Sage and haven't done anything special?

[bjterry62]

He has it working OTA (which none of the previous posters even tried). QAM will not happen unitl Sage supports the card. Hoping to get it working before it is officially supported by Sage is a pipe dream. For you guys that have bought the card and not returned it yet, post in Sage tech support section and they will probably start working on it if the card looks good. No promises though, but if it turns out to be a really popular card, it could happen.

BT

[mookie]

just my .02, I know this thread refers to the QAM version, but for the OTA version I was seeing the same issues (Sage couldn't scan channels) and it was a conflict with the Pinnacle software (not the drivers, but the actual software), so you can try uninstalling that (which again does NOT touch the drivers) and try the scan in Sage. Again, just a suggestion since I know the QAM functionality is different

[holmtech]

Yes it works with OTA beautifully. Perfect HD signal and timeshifting. Per another poster's recommendations I did not install the Pinnacle software at all and just let windows install the drivers for the card.

[EdwardATeller]

Circuit City has this card now:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Pinna...oductDetail.do

Saw it there yesterday, and I nearly bought it since they have a full-refund policy for 30 days, no questions asked. It is a very compact card and would be nice for a small case, IF it works.

[mike1961]

Two questions:

One: what does QAM stand for?

Two: If one gets a card like this then how well will it work OTA? Does one have to mount a large antenna on their roof or what? My home owner's association will get picky about big ugly antennas on the roof.

Any comments?

Thanks,
Mike

[mcaron1234]

Supposedly Pinnacle has released drivers for this card to get unencrypted QAM in VMC. I read about it here.

Anybody wanna be a guinea pig for Sage?