Posted Nov 25, 2025

Why is “The Unbound Gateway” release such a big deal?

Support for protected content on gateway connected devices means that finally the annoyances associated with content protection start receding into the background where they belong. Ordinary consumers should never notice it. Content protection should only come into the foreground when someone tries to make unapproved commercial use of media.

What does this release allow ZapperBox users to do?

With v3.4 protected content can be viewed, recorded and played back on a DVR. It can also be streamed to all ZapperBox devices in the home.

Read this blog post by Stephen Pendergast to get a sense of what has been accomplished by our team. A couple of quotes:

“This makes ZapperBox the only plug-and-play DVR capable of recording [and streaming] encrypted ATSC 3.0 channels as of November 2025.”

“ZapperBox successfully achieved Tuner profile certification (October 2023) and DVR profile certification (April 2024), demonstrating that A3SA certification is possible but requires significant engineering resources and time [16]. The company represents a case study in navigating A3SA's certification process.”

Content protection (DRM) is difficult to implement. As Stephen points out, some people have argued that it could not be done for gateways. And, no other gateway OEM has been able to deliver this functionality yet.

What comes next?

We plan to release apps for non-ZapperBox devices made by companies like Roku, Google, LG, Samsung, Apple, etc. to access protected content from ZapperBox gateways.