5. Testing

The test recordings that I performed with the PMC produced a decent capture file as long as I left the computer alone during the recording. When I attempted to time shift through some advertisements, however, the recording became jumpy and had a difficult time recovering. (Time shifting is what enables you to pause live TV, by continuing to record a TV show while you watch the portion that has already been recorded.) I also tested the Pro Stick hardware using Windows Media Center, and didn't have any of the time shifting problems that I experienced with the PMC.

The media file player was also buggy. In fact, I found several of the tests to be baffling. Why would SD DivX fail to play, given that the PMC is capable of capturing video in SD DivX? For that matter, why did the HD DivX play just fine, while the SD DivX files failed? The biggest mystery was that one of four similarly-encoded Quicktime files worked, while the other three received an error.

After a while, I began to suspect that the file browser in the PMC was responsible for the problems with the audio and DivX files. Instead of attempting to play the files in the PMC, they would just freeze in the browser window. I was never able to explain the Quicktime mystery. Clearly these problems did nothing to improve my already dwindling confidence in the PMC.

I performed most of the testing for this review on Test Setup #1, but in order to get an idea of the Pro Stick's performance in Windows Media Center, I ran a few tests on an HTPC, and I also installed it on an old laptop to see if I could make it work on a system with a slower processor than the minimum requirement.