An ATSC gateway should support the following:
- Both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0
- DRM on the gateway and all clients
- Apps for third party hardware
We launched ZapperBox in July 2022 and will move past the first two steps once we ship v4.0. The next big deliverables are apps for third party devices. We just introduced the first app for Windows. The grid below shows next steps for third party apps. The eye icon indicates our next goal, which may change. The TV platforms are listed in a rough order of priority that may also change.
This matrix is handy to track our progress. Our goal is to eventually check off each box on the grid. Some boxes may never get checked off due to technical or hardware limitations. Some apps and features will take more time than others.
We call our app zApp. You can download it from the "Downloads" tab under "Support". The current v1.x versions allows you to use a UI on your Windows device to play back ATSC 1.0 recordings from local storage. These are early "SneakerNet" versions. We plan to add more SneakerNet versions for macOS, Roku, Android, etc. These will be followed by "zApp LAN" versions that allow playback over the home network and "zApp Remote" versions that allow playback over the Internet. The road ahead includes:
- Playback over the home network
- Live TV over the home network
- Remote playback while traveling
- Live TV via remote access
- Support for ATSC 3.0 clear programs
- Support for ATSC 3.0 encrypted channels
We hope that you will select a ZapperBox quad tuner, dual tuner or single tuner whole-home DVR as your ATSC gateway and allow us to protect your investment during this transition from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0. ZapperBox is the only true ATSC 3.0 gateway that is shipping today. However, ATSC 1.0 incumbents have been around much longer. The following table provides a useful comparison of capabilities. We are much further ahead in the areas of ATSC 3.0 support and HDMI output. We are playing catchup in the area of OS platforms supported for apps.
*HDHomeRun Flex 4K supports ATSC 3.0 clear broadcasts but does not support encrypted broadcasts. We estimate that about 75% of ATSC 3.0 broadcasts are currently encrypted.
A Review:
Since its launch ZapperBox has accomplished the following:
- ATSC 1.0 + ATSC 3.0 tuner
- DRM
- DVR
- TechHive Editor’s Choice Award for the best OTA DVR in 2024.
- Whole-Home DVR aka Gateway
- Zapper Mini for rooms without an antenna
- Quad-tuner
- eCoustics, Best OTA DVR Award in 2025
- Multi-room DRM for connected devices
- Best Standalone OTA DVR Award - Tyler, The Antenna Man in 2026
- zApp for Windows
Disclaimer:
No dates or features are guaranteed unless we publish them on our release notes page here.
Whataboutism:
No matter how impressive a track record we can point to from our launch in 2022 until now, there will always be naysayers who say that ATSC 1.0 is much better and an ATSC 3.0 gateway will NEVER be able to do a what an ATSC 1.0 gateway can do. Most naysayers fail to recall that the NTSC to ATSC 1.0 transition started in 1996 and completed in 2009. The DVRs considered today's ATSC 1.0 "gold standard" only started appearing in 2006 when most of the hard work had already been completed. The TiVo Series3 HD came out on Sep 12, 2006, four years after the digital tuner mandate. Many others followed.
Let's recall some history. Our team started implementing the ATSC 1.0 software stack in 1996. Our first customer was Zenith Electronics whose HDTV set-top box was called the gold standard by Joel Brinkley who reviewed it for the New York Times in 1998. Things REALLY sucked until around 2005. A tier-1 brand TV that we tested at Zenith would take 30 seconds to tune to ATSC 1.0 channels and would blue screen whenever an airplane flew by. Everyone complained that no one will switch to digital TV because analog TV had an 80-millisecond channel change time compared to 2 seconds for the best (Zenith) HDTV. We still have a collection of about 250 DVDs somewhere with illegal ATSC 1.0 streams from markets across the country. Eventually our ATSC 1.0 stack shipped in over 30 million TV receivers from brands like Sony, Panasonic, RCA, JVC, Sharp, and many more.
We are in year 9 of the current transition to ATSC 3.0. Our expectation is that everything including DRM will work flawlessly by the end of 2026. The LA Olympics start in 2028 and ZapperBox will be ready. You will start seeing the first ZapperBox apps for popular smart TV platforms during 2026. The best is yet to come.
