Jacken’s Blog

**Update:**
**I now got a beta version of the software that partially fixed some of the problems. It still does not seem to work correctly with an other antenna.**

I was out shopping yesterday with my family. And sometimes you just have to get some new gear. So I bought a [Pinnacle PCTV USB DVB-T receiver][pctv]. I used a computer in the store to check that It was compatible with the [EyeTV][eyetv] software. As usual there was no Mac compatible software included with the Pinnacle hardware. But when I connected it all, I had really bad reception of the TV signal. I tried a lot of different places in the appartment (including standing in a room that has line of site of the broadcast antenna for the DVB-T broadcast) but still only got a 46% signal quality. So the video was choppy or nonexistent. Fortunately I now got a Macbook Pro, so I tried to install the Pinnacle software in Windows, and naturally I got a 100% reception and it worked like a charm. My conclution is that there is a bug in the EyeTV software. Here’s a funny tidbit, If you remove the antenna you actually get marginally better reception.

So I guess my adventures with this continues. Let’s hope the support at [El Gato][eyetv] can help me.

[pctv]:http://estore.pinnaclesys.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_GB&id=ProductDetailsPage&SiteID=piestore&productID=40255600&Env=BASE
[eyetv]:http://www.elgato.com