Pinnacle Announces USB Stick with Built-in PVR

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/02/22/pinnacle-announces-usb-stick-with-built-in-pvr/' target='_blank'>http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/02/22/pinnacle-announces-usb-stick-with-built-in-pvr/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Pinnacle Systems has released the PCTV USB Stick, a USB 2.0 tuner for Digital Terrestrial TV (U.K.), which ships with a mini remote control and antenna that connects directly into the USB port of any laptop. The package also includes Pinnacle's TVCenter software with an extensive EPG package and PVR software, which allows you to watch, record or timeshift a DTT signal in MPEG-1, 2 and DivX. Costs are indicated at around £49.99, available in March."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/PCTV_USB_Stick.GIF" /> <br /><br />Hopefully this will be available globally soon. Even cooler would be if they could build in small USB drive to hold the software (maybe even with an autoloader so the program could install and start running just by plugging it in). Ultimate coolness (maybe in a few years with continuing drops in the price of USB memory keys) would be to have a ton of memory built in to actually store recordings so that it could be computer independent.

[Filip Norrgard]

It could be available globally, if DVB digital TV format was adopted globally. But, since North America goes ATSC and Korea for DMB (or something like that?), it isn't yet possible to do an all in one digital TV USB stick.

Maybe, if/when it is possible to sqweeze more digital TV formats decoders into one chip, we'll see an USB stick that does the trick. ;)

Btw, it seems to me that this is the same USB digital TV stick that Hauppauge made public last year and that Technotrend manufactures (for both brands).