Updated Aug 8, 2025
*Real ATSC gateways must support the following:
- Both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0
- DRM on the gateway and all clients
- Offline DRM on the gateway. The current security spec does not allow offline DRM on connected clients. This may change in the future.
With that definition out of the way, let’s see where we stand with ZapperBox today. Since day one, we have maintained that all ZapperBox devices will be software upgradable to become real gateways. And, that ZapperBox will protect your investment during the transition from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0. We have accomplished the following since July 2022:
- ATSC 1.0 + ATSC 3.0 tuner
- DRM
- DVR
- TechHive Editor’s Choice Award for the best OTA DVR.
- Whole-Home DVR
- New single tuner at $199
- Zapper Mini box for rooms without an antenna at $129
- Quad-tuner - we started taking pre-orders on Jul 26, 2025.
- Encrypted channels for Zapper Mini - working now.
Our remaining gateway transition roadmap follows:
- v4.0 will support secure content on connected ZapperBox devices.
- v4.0+ will add support for apps for non ZapperBox devices.
- v4.0++ will allow multi-room devices to control each other.
v4.0+ ZapperBox apps: The next significant step will be the creation of the first streaming app for a non-ZapperBox device. Since the current ZapperBox app runs on Android, the first logical target may be something like the $29 Walmart Onn 4K Plus or all Sony NEXTGEN TVs both of which are based on Android. However, it may make more sense to start with the Roku TV OS – time will tell. 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.
v4.0++ is significant. It implies that dual and single tuner devices will not need to have an attached TV or a remote control. They will become real gateways that can be placed in a closet and controlled remotely. That’s the definition of a real gateway. Version 4.0+ will also allow us to start work on integration with home automation platforms like Control4, Crestron and Savant. It should be noted here that multi-room control features have already started appearing in v3.2.6, which allows recordings to be deleted from a connected device.
Disclaimer: All version numbers here are speculative. No dates or version numbers 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 are too young to remember the NTSC to ATSC 1.0 transition that 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. 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 up until about 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 8 of the current transition to ATSC 3.0. It's always darkest before dawn. 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.