Woot: The Community: Woots: Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Mac

I have been testing the EyeTV Hybrid 2009 on my iMac and am not sold on it yet - was wondering if anyone has the Pinnacle HD Mini Stick for the Mac and if one is considered to be superior to the other. I realize that the later comes with the lite version of the EyeTV software but that doesn't bother me. With the EyeTv if I connect from my cable box to to the iMac I get all the channels but the quality is not pristine. I had thought this was digital TV but it is described by Elgato as analog.

• Woot The Community Woot Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Mac And Cheese
• Woot The Community Woot Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Mac And Pc
• Woot The Community Woots Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Macbook Pro

Is that the same with the Pinnacle? Is the antenna provided with the Pinnacle of any use? I bought what I thought was a small picture frame antenna from Radio Shack and it is larger than what I had hoped for - so my desire to have a portable setup with my Macbook has also pretty much been stymied. I have been testing the EyeTV Hybrid 2009 on my iMac and am not sold on it yet - was wondering if anyone has the Pinnacle HD Mini Stick for the Mac and if one is considered to be superior to the other. I realize that the later comes with the lite version of the EyeTV software but that doesn't bother me. With the EyeTv if I connect from my cable box to to the iMac I get all the channels but the quality is not pristine.

I had thought this was digital TV but it is described by Elgato as analog. Is that the same with the Pinnacle? Is the antenna provided with the Pinnacle of any use? I bought what I thought was a small picture frame antenna from Radio Shack and it is larger than what I had hoped for - so my desire to have a portable setup with my Macbook has also pretty much been stymied. Click to expand.Let me start off by saying I own an Eyetv Hybrid and I have never used a Pinnacle HD Mini Stick.

The signal coming from your cable box is NOT digital even though it is a digital box. It is being transmitted from the box to the Eyetv tuner with an analog coaxial cable. (In order for you to receive true digital content you must use a HDMI cable or DVI cable).

The LG 26 ” LCD Widescreen Monitor has a 1920×1200 resolution, and not only supports full 1080p HD, it actually goes up to 1200p with a 16:10 aspect ratio. This means that no. My box says 'pinnacle TV for Mac HD mini stick' and the specs are all for a Mac yet Woot says this will work with a PC or Mac. I had an online chat with Pinnacle tech support and they said it will only work with a Mac. Turn your Mac into an HDTV with Pinnacle's Mac HD Stick TV tuner. This handy device will work equally well at home or on the road. The high speed USB 2.0 interface ensures flicker-free performance. The ultra sensitive receiver and high-gain antenna pull in even distant signals. The hybrid tuner can handle both analog and digital broadcasts.

Currently there is not a TV tuner for Mac that I know of that accepts either HDMI or DVI input. Additionally analog content is in NTSC format, the Pinnacle only supports Digital (ATSC and Clear QAM).

The EyeTV Hybrid supports all 3. You would not be able to use the Pinnacle with your cable box. Depends on your area with that antenna, just have to test it an see. Nothing special about it. It is just a single bunny ear that has been around for decades. You don't need a special antenna to pick up the new over the air digital broadcasts. So to sum it up, stick with your Eyetv Hope this helps.

Click to expand.ohhhh, $150 sounds really pricey for an antenna. You should be able to get the job done with a $25 antenna.

Hauppauge came out with an HD PVR that you can use for your Mac (Works with Eyetv) although it is still analog. It uses Component cables. Should improve the picture substantially. But, it doesn't have a tuner, which means you can't hook an antenna up to it!

The TubeStick hybrid looks very similar to your Eyetv hybrid. No mention of FM radio feature or whether it is compatible with Eyetv software. You would have to check on that.

This device shouldn't have any advantage over your current tuner. No idea when or if they will ever come out with something that has HDMI/DVI input. I will be first in line. The TubeStick does look cool. I'd stick with the EyeTV Hybrid though. It's a much more proven product, and the support for it is great.

But I do want to buy an antennae that looks like the one that comes with the TubeStick! And to the other poster about DVI/HDMI: You're right that if you want a pure digital signal, those two are the only way to go currently (DisplayPort also, but it's too new to count yet). However, you don't need a TV tuner to receive a HDMI/DVI signal from a cable box or whatnot. You just have to have a display, any display, that has a HDMI or DVI input.

If you're waiting for a DVI or HDMI to USB dongle, that's never going to happen. The bandwidth required makes this physically impossible. The TubeStick does look cool. I'd stick with the EyeTV Hybrid though. It's a much more proven product, and the support for it is great.

But I do want to buy an antennae that looks like the one that comes with the TubeStick! And to the other poster about DVI/HDMI: You're right that if you want a pure digital signal, those two are the only way to go currently (DisplayPort also, but it's too new to count yet). However, you don't need a TV tuner to receive a HDMI/DVI signal from a cable box or whatnot. You just have to have a display, any display, that has a HDMI or DVI input. If you're waiting for a DVI or HDMI to USB dongle, that's never going to happen. The bandwidth required makes this physically impossible.

Sometimes interesting products roll across the MacNN reviews desk. The Pinnacle TV for Mac HD Stick is one of them. This small portable product allows you to watch and record HD TV right onto your Macintosh. The product is similar in function to an Elgato Hybrid and uses their software.

The Elgato Hybrid, for those keeping score at home, looks the same as a Hauppauge HVR-950, which Elgato links to on their page. What separates the Pinnacle HD product from Elgato's offering is that it comes with EyeTV Lite instead of the full-featured EyeTV 2.x software, plus it comes with an infrared remote control.

This review covers some of the differences between EyeTV and EyeTV Lite, in addition to a discussion of the performance of the device itself. New Features One of the upgrades in the EyeTV setup assistant that wasn't seen in EyeTV 2.3.x, is support for a cable or satellite set-top box, in addition to an antenna.

EyeTV now supports the iRed or ZephIR IR Blaster. This option is only useful if you use the COAX RF connector for Analog only, and ignore the HD capability of the device, or if you use the composite S-Video connectors on the breakout cable to connect to the set-top box. Using these connectors is the only way you can connect to HD over the antenna and still get analog programming at the same time. You must read two FAQs on Elgato's site in order to configure IR blasting properly. The links appear at the end of this review. You must configure the blaster first, and then configure the EyeTV software to work with the blaster. This is not as convoluted as it once was, but it is fairly un-Mac-like, requiring you to jump between two applications to get the device configured.

Woot The Community Woot Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Mac And Cheese

Pinnacle TV Device In autotune, it tuned both ATSC and NTSC in one pass. This is the way it should be done. The analog audio is mono, which is fine, but the HD side of the device is stereo, and it would be nice to have both.

Earlier, I mentioned the breakout cable. The cable is solid black, with no colors to indicate connections. It has S-Video, one RCA, and one 1/8' jack. It is unclear at first if their intention is to connect video to the RCA as if it were yellow, and a stereo 1/8' plug to RCA connector to get the audio in, but that's my best guess.

This is an easily bought cable, but not included. Remote is no bargain The remote is not very good. It's about the size of the Apple Remote, but twice as thick to accommodate AAA batteries. The button layout is poor. It has a Pinnacle key that is a pinwheel icon for the full screen menu, which is bigger than the other buttons. The channel and volume buttons are ok, but the number pad doubles as navigation buttons, with the transport controls at the bottom.

Other than the Pinnacle key, they're all the same size and this is annoying. When you use a remote, you want the layout to be such that all the buttons you use most often are conveniently laid out under your thumb, and you want them to be differently sized and shaped to indicate their use, or priority. For example, Pause should be large, since time shifting is one of the intended common uses.

Thankfully, you aren't locked into using the Pinnacle remote, because if you have an Intel-based Macintosh, you can use the Apple remote with EyeTV Lite. Reception by station I tuned over the air (OTA), and it dutifully scanned HD and analog channels. These results are based on my location, which is 15 miles from the broadcast towers, in a two-story building with trees that are over 30ft tall between the tower and me. 50-1 - Excellent reception.

2 - This doesn't exist. Why did it pick it up OTA?. 3 - This doesn't exist. Why did it pick it up OTA?.

4 - Poor reception, but this is a notoriously hard station to lock onto. 5 - Passable, but this is an easy one to receive in NTSC analog. 6 - This doesn't exist. Why did it pick it up OTA?. 5-1 Works, but bad reception. It hiccups and in HD it stuttered.

5-2 No problem (480p). 11-1 and 11-2 Excellent. 17-1 Notoriously difficult to pick up. Took a long time to lock.

17-2 After locking for 30 sec, it worked well (480p). 22-1 A 480 image with pillar boxing in 720 resolution.

It took a while to lock, but still had weird black bars breaking it up. 28-1 Same 480 in 720. Works perfectly. Some of the unreliable reception is due to the quality of antenna that Pinnacle includes. The antenna is a portable one, but, a roof-mounted antenna would have better success.

No EyeTV Programs window When I open Preferences, it gives me an advertisement to upgrade to EyeTV and dismisses the window without delivering any preference screen. If I press Upgrade now, it takes me to the website. This means there are no device preferences to tell signal strength for the Pinnacle device. Thankfully, the Pinnacle TV is supported by the full version of EyeTV, which I have on my Macintosh. In the Preferences, Info area, I learn that the device is the Pinnacle TV for Mac HD Stick 800e with the following specifications:. xceive c3028 1.0 2.7. tv tvp5150.

atsc decoder lg dt3303. usb controller empa em2880 Signal strengths are as follows:. 50-1 - 54-66%. 5-1 - 54-64%. 11-1 - 54-60% - Weird breakup on screen that corresponds to signal quality dropping to 97.8%, 37%, 6.1%, and then returns to 100%.

17-1 - quality 0%, signal 36%. 22-1 - 91%, 56%. 28-1 - 66-70% The behavior with channel 11-1 is synonymous with multipath.

Multipath is when a signal gets to the antenna by two or more paths. How can one signal from a broadcaster's tower arrive in two or more paths?

The signals bounce around, and if one arrives late, they're out of phase and throw the signal off. Since this is digital, it just cuts out completely. Some tuners deal with multipath better than others, and better antennae can also help.

Woot The Community Woot Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Mac And Pc

Depending on where the signals are broadcast from, it may not be possible to eliminate the multipath. Using EyeTV Lite I can record, but without an EyeTV Programs window, the only way to view recordings is in the full screen menu, which is viewable in a windowed mode.

This menu is the only way to set up schedules, view the guide, and so on. It has no export function that I can determine, so exporting for devices like iPod or AppleTV is impossible without buying the upgrade. There is no ability to set up repeating schedules. There is no editing capability. Set a schedule to record from the guide, and the only editing you can do is delete or disable. Final analysis The Pinnacle TV isn't all bad.

The device itself is an affordable solution if you need HD and analog TV, but the remote seems like an afterthought. The price is right at $129, but the software limits you from some of the configuration items that really ought to be present, such as Preferences that allow you to see signal strength. If you don't need the remote, you may be better off buying the EyeTV Hybrid that comes with the full version of the software. This depends on how much value you place on the remote, versus being able to configure and export recordings. The other option is to upgrade the software that ships with the Pinnacle.

My assessment is that the Pinnacle TV for Mac HD Stick is one grade above average, but that's all. It suffers even more from bundling the product with EyeTV Lite instead of the full version. Helpful Links and Related Product Reviews:.

Woot The Community Woots Pinnacle Tv Hd Stick For Macbook Pro

Cirrus creates Lightning-headphone dev kit Apple supplier Cirrus Logic has introduced a MFi-compliant new development kit for companies interested in using Cirrus' chips to create Lightning-based headphones, which - regardless of whether rumors about Apple dropping the analog headphone jack in its iPhone this fall - can offer advantages to music-loving iOS device users. The kit mentions some of the advantages of an all-digital headset or headphone connector, including higher-bitrate support, a more customizable experience, and support for power and data transfer into headphone hardware. Several companies already make Lightning headphones, and Apple has supported the concept since June 2014. The Apple Store app for iPhone, which periodically rewards users with free app gifts, is now offering the iPhone 'Pocket' version of drawing app Procreate for those who have the free Apple Store app until July 28. Users who have redeemed the offer by navigating to the 'Stores' tab of the app and swiping past the 'iPhone Upgrade Program' banner to the 'Procreate' banner have noted that only the limited Pocket (iPhone) version of the app is available free, even if the Apple Store app is installed and the offer redeemed on an iPad. The Pocket version currently sells for $3 on the iOS App Store. Porsche adds CarPlay to 2017 Panamera Porsche has added a fifth model of vehicle to its CarPlay-supported lineup, announcing that the 2017 Panamera - which will arrive in the US in January - will include Apple's infotainment technology, and be seen on a giant 12.3-inch touchscreen as part of an all-new Porsche Communication Management system.

The luxury sedan starts at $99,900 for the 4S model, and scales up to the Panamera Turbo, which sells for $146,900. Other vehicles that currently support CarPlay include the 2016 911 and the 2017 models of Macan, 718 Boxster, and 718 Cayman. The company did not mention support for Google's corresponding Android Auto in its announcement. Apple employees testing wheelchair features New features included in the forthcoming watchOS 3 are being tested by Apple retail store employees, including a new activity-tracking feature that has been designed with wheelchair users in mind. The move is slightly unusual in that, while retail employees have previously been used to test pre-release versions of OS X and iOS, this marks the first time they've been included in the otherwise developer-only watchOS betas. The company is said to have gone to great lengths to modify the activity tracker for wheelchair users, including changing the 'time to stand' notification to 'time to roll' and including two wheelchair-centric workout apps. Twitter stickers slowly roll out to users Twitter has introduced 'stickers,' allowing users to add extra graphical elements to their photos before uploading them to the micro-blogging service.

A library of hundreds of accessories, props, and emoji will be available to use as stickers, which can be resized, rotated, and placed anywhere on the photograph. Images with stickers will also become searchable with viewers able to select a sticker to see how others use the same graphic in their own posts. Twitter advises stickers will be rolling out to users over the next few weeks, and will work on both the mobile apps and through the browser.