The PID Detective accepts an incoming stream of MPEG-2 Transport Stream video either over DVB ASI or SMPTE 310M interfaces. The PID Detective analyzes the PID data rate for up to four PIDs in the incoming stream. Alarm levels for the PID clock rates are set so that if the rate falls below the pre-set level an alert is produced.

The alert consists of an email message that can be sent over the internet to a selectable list of people and an entry in a log file that is accessible over a network. PID Detective with PID Watcher can also send real-time records of current PID rates to a central server running PID Watcher software. PID Watcher can collect records from a group of PID Detectives and display the data on a web page that can be accessed over the Internet. Further capabilities are being developed.