Pinnacle PCTV HD PCI Capture Card
If you use a Home Theater PC, then you’re no doubt familiar with the many PVR and HDTV cards available. Although Windows Media Center supports 2 PVR cards plus an over-the-air HDTV card, it would be nice if there were a single card that integrated all of these technologies into a single card.
Pinnacle has introduced their PCTV HD video capture card for the PC that not only integrates standard-definition decoding and FM radio, but OTA (over-the-air) HD receiption, in addition to QAM (unencrypted HDTV over cable). Pinnacle also claims full Media Center compliance for Windows XP and Vista. These features on a single card will certainly pique the interests of any home theater enthusiast, who have been looking for such a card for years.
Enjoy live HD or SD TV on your PC
Pinnacle PCTV HD Card brings SD and HD TV with full personal video recorder (PVR) functionality to your PC – with no desktop clutter. Watch, time shift and even automatically record all of your favorite HD and SD TV shows with no service fees.
- 3-in-1 TV tuner card for digital TV (ATSC), analog TV (NTSC) and FM radio
- Watch SD and free HDTV on your PC – no service fees
- Includes remote control and FM radio antenna
- Hardware ready for ClearQAM (unencrypted digital cable) reception
- Automatically record shows to your hard drive in the destination file format of choice (i.e. MPEG-2, DivX, etc.) or even direct-to-DVD
- Capture from your cable/satellite set-top box or camcorder with the included A/V adapter cable
- Turns your PC into a personal video recorder (PVR) with time-shifting: pause, rewind TV
- Trim your videos with Pinnacle Studio QuickStart




3 Comments
I want to ask if this card does better than the ATI AIW that I have. When I look at HD on either my monitor, which has great resolution, or my HDTV, the signal from the AIW is not sharp at all.
Is the Pinnacle's picture sharp and clear?
I've tested several video capture cards, and those that natively use MPEG aren't as sharp. I've gotten really sharp results just by using VIVO on a regular video card and capturing in MJPEG, but it really doesn't matter because it eventually gets compressed into MPEG2 or H.264 anyway.
the remote that came with my card does not work