7. Conclusion

My feelings on the Pro Stick are mixed. I really liked the hardware: it's functional, portable, capable of sharing the encoding process between the CPU and GPU, and performed quite well when paired with a good Media Center package. The Pinnacle Media Center software, on the other hand, was so painful to use that it nearly over-shadowed the positives of the Pro Stick hardware. Pinnacle would be better off abandoning their media center completely, because it's really not worth the trouble. At the very least, they need to go back to the drawing board, fix some of the bugs in the PMC, and give it an improved interface.

The Pro Stick would be best used as an add-on tuner in a system that's already set up with a media center package. It could even be paired up with a decent open source media center like Media Portal or GB-PVR, both of which are free.

All things considered, I liked the Pro Stick. The mere fact that it can be easily transferred between computers via USB is a big selling point. The Pro Stick is a viable solution if you're looking to add a tuner easily to an existing HTPC setup, or add TV capability to your laptop. It's also worth checking into if you are curious about owning an HTPC, and want to test a tuner out on your office PC. Just don't bother installing the PMC software!

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