So you're sitting around, totally bored with the same old PC, bored with word processing, bored with spreadsheets, bored with Web browsing, bored with music, bored with news, bored with grainy YouTube videos.
Then you realize it's Sunday night, and it strikes you: What you really want to do is watch Desperate Housewives. On your computer. In HD.
Well, for a hundred bucks, you can satisfy that high-definition craving with the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick. Plug this nifty little gadget into a USB port on your computer, hook up an antenna or cable feed to the other end and you're in business - HDTV in a window on your desktop, or full-screen if you prefer.
The software bundle includes a digital video recorder (DVR) so you can record your favorite shows while you're not there. There's even a tiny remote control so you can watch without getting out of your chair.
The Pro Stick also has an intriguing feature whose existence I was only vaguely aware of before this. It's a circuit called a QAM tuner, which brings in unscrambled digital broadcasts, including some in high-definition, directly from a cable company feed - without a cable box, high-def or otherwise. QAM is also built into most new digital sets.
You won't get your cable company's whole digital menu, most of which is scrambled unless you rent a digital box. But you'll generally see the same digital channels you'd pick up with an antenna, without the vagaries of digital reception over-the-air. You may even pick up some video-on-demand channels if someone in your neighborhood is watching them.
First things first - there's only so much TV you can expect from a hundred-dollar PC gadget. The Pro Stick generally delivers what it promises, but there's no way a picture processed through software by a PC and displayed on a monitor that's not optimized for television is going look as good as it would on a stand-alone HDTV set - or on even a monitor driven by an internal PC tuner.
Still, the quality was fine for casual, close-up viewing - better than analog TV tuner cards I've tried in the past. For that reason, the Pro Stick is a cheap and efficient way to turn a student's laptop into a dorm room entertainment center. Assuming you're OK with a student who watches Desperate Housewives instead of studying.
