Review on PCTV Deluxe Tuner and Video, powered by Pinnacle, with USB 2.0 connectivity by Robert Espinoza

Installation is easy, the device has a very nice and compact design. The PCTV Vision software included in the package needs a lot of improvement; this tends to freeze the system in Windows XP and video freezes very often. On some systems, the remote control becomes unresponsive and the screen goes black even when there is a signal on the cable. When changing channels, the audio channel sometimes freezes on the previous channel. I found the software works better on Windows 2000 with P4. The PCTV box does not work with third party software such as Vegas Video or PowerVCR. The included CD contains a trial version of Pinnacle's Studio 8, and you can't even use Studio 8 to capture video from PCTV Deluxe. The video quality on TV is good and the MPEG encoder did a good job, except all the encoded videos are interlaced, you have to deinterlace them yourself. This unit has both S-Video and Composite Video inputs, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired. I think this product has a lot of potential but until Pinnacle fixes their software and driver I don't recommend spending money on this product.