I bought a Pinnacle PCTV Pro card a while ago after thorough research to make sure that it would work under linux. On their website it says that there are working linux drivers for their cards and I read a couple of success stories using the bttv-drivers.
But of course the card didn't work at all. I could use the composite inputs, but the tuner didn't work.
After searching around the video4linux mailing list archives I found some information that Pinnacle had changed their tuner to a new one without telling anyone.
I tried to contact Pinnacle to tell them that I either wanted to return the card or to get them to release the specifications for the tuner so someone could add the new tuner (Microtune MT2050) to the bttv driver. The Pinnacle support refused to acknowledge that there was a problem and pointed me to the bttv drivers even though i tried explaining to them a hundred times what the problem was.
Then I tried contacting microtune to get the specifications for the tuner so I could write the driver myself. I got an account for their developer area, and there they had specifications for all their tuners except the MT2050.
After that I got pissed off and called the Pinnacle Germany HQ to get some answers. They put in contact with some kind of lead developer who was able to listen to my problem and said that he would try to help me out with specifications. I never heard from him after that.
I also contacted microtune again and they told me that the MT2050 specification was classified.
I am not good enough a coder to reverse engineer the windows drivers, and I didn't have enough time, so I gave up. Now someone has at last reverse engineered them so now I can watch TV, but the quality is abysmal (even in windows).
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I bought a Pinnacle PCTV Pro card a while ago after thorough research to make sure that it would work under linux. On their website it says that there are working linux drivers for their cards and I read a couple of success stories using the bttv-drivers.
But of course the card didn't work at all. I could use the composite inputs, but the tuner didn't work.
After searching around the video4linux mailing list archives I found some information that Pinnacle had changed their tuner to a new one without telling anyone.
I tried to contact Pinnacle to tell them that I either wanted to return the card or to get them to release the specifications for the tuner so someone could add the new tuner (Microtune MT2050) to the bttv driver. The Pinnacle support refused to acknowledge that there was a problem and pointed me to the bttv drivers even though i tried explaining to them a hundred times what the problem was.
Then I tried contacting microtune to get the specifications for the tuner so I could write the driver myself. I got an account for their developer area, and there they had specifications for all their tuners except the MT2050.
After that I got pissed off and called the Pinnacle Germany HQ to get some answers. They put in contact with some kind of lead developer who was able to listen to my problem and said that he would try to help me out with specifications. I never heard from him after that.
I also contacted microtune again and they told me that the MT2050 specification was classified.
I am not good enough a coder to reverse engineer the windows drivers, and I didn't have enough time, so I gave up. Now someone has at last reverse engineered them so now I can watch TV, but the quality is abysmal (even in windows).
So my recommendation is. Stay away from Pinnacle!