M1 ATSC 3.0 OTA Tuner & DVR with 4K, HDR, and Channel Guide (Dual Tuner)

Great Product From A Company Who Cares
Do you want the best possible picture from your local TV stations? If so this might be the device for you. Before purchasing the Zapperbox you need to do some things.1. Go online to see if any stations are broadcasting the NextGen or ATSC 3.0 signal. If you search for NextGen you can search by your location and see why you might want to watch using this new standard.2. Can you currently receive TV over the air at your location? If so and stations are broadcasting NextGen you will probably be ok since the 3.0 signal is usually easier to pick up than the old 1.0 standard.3. Is your TV capable of displaying the full potential of the NextGen broadcast? Really not a lot of reason to spend the money for something that provides something you can’t fully enjoy.4. Do you have a free HDMI port needed to connect the Zapperbox? This is the only way the Zapperbox will connect to your TV. My LG has 4 HDMI ports and after connecting the soundbar (eARC), Chromecast, and a 4K UHD blu-ray player I had one port left. I’ve never used a HDMI switch so I’m not sure how that work if you don’t have a spare port.The box was easy to set up. If you are watching TV live you do not need to be connected to the internet. However, software updates and the eventual use of the 14 day program guide require the internet so you should just keep the Zapperbox connected to the internet. You are not streaming TV so the device, most of the time, uses no bandwidth. Updates come frequently and you can see a timeline of when the company plans to release the next update and what the update will provide on the company’s website. So far everything has been released when scheduled.NextGen TV has a provision for content security referred to often as digital rights management or DRM. When I first got the box none of my stations had turned it on. Subsequently two stations have turned on DRM. Currently the Zapperbox can not handle broadcasts with DRM turned on. The founder of the company wrote me a note saying they expect a fix that will authorize the display of DRM broadcasts in around a month. You can search to find out if your stations have turned on DRM. Fortunately, for me, 6 of the 7 NextGen broadcasts including the two which have content security enabled are handled by one local engineering department. So I called chief engineer and he said no problem and flipped a switch so I can now watch those two stations again. That’s service.I have not been able to get the Zapperbox remote to learn how to control the volume on my TV/Soundbar but I can mute it. There is a long delay in switching between the old ATSC 1.0 stations and the 3.0 stations but, for me, switching between ATSC 3.0 stations is instantaneous. I have the single turner model because I never have a need to decide between two over the air broadcasts. You can currently pause live TV or go back, if you haven’t changed the channel. Full DVR capability should be available within a couple of months. You’ll need some type of external storage to use that. I just threw in an SD card but you can attach a flash drive or a hard drive. To use the DVR requires subscribing to their program guide. That would require paying a regular fee since the company has to pay for it and the servers to provide the service. There is a built it short-term program guide the stations send out with their signal. No charge for that.In the end a happy customer. You will not often deal with a company that cares more and gives the support that the Zapperbox folks do.UpdateThey just pushed out the software to allow viewing of ATSC 3.0 stations that encrypt their signal. Given that the reason to buy a Zapperbox is to view the 3.0 signal this was a must. Currently half the stations in my market use encryption.

Improved reception with more channels
I live in a area which the reception sites say I won’t get any channels but I’ve had a antenna with a rotor for 15 years and have had good and bad times for reception.When I first set up my antenna it worked really well till the FCC did the repacking of the bandwidth and sold the rest to the cell phone carriers ( that’s the good times) after that the reception went way down (sometimes unwatchable for months) I’ve been fighting it every since.With the zapper box the 3.0 channels are vary near perfect (I have 7 of them ABC NBC CBS FOX JOE and KONG which is part of NBC)The only 2 that are DRM encrypted are NBC & KONG and the unit decrypts them no problem.The 1.0 channels come in much more reliability now and the dvr seems to clean up reception when watching at a later time as opposed to watching live on a bad day for reception.The remote is set up to move easily threw all the functions during set up and operation, all other DVRs I’ve tried are vary hard to get to where ya want to go plus the recording playback was always a pain , not so with the zapper box.I don’t appreciate having to pay for the 14 day guide but I gotta tell ya it’s friggin awesome and easy to set up recordings .Since December zapper box has probably had a dozen software updates and each one is better than the last so that makes the investment feel alot better.When I first got the unit the 3.0 stations didn’t have closed captioning and I’m vary dependent upon them so I emailed em about that and they replied promptly and said it was a DRM problem and would be fixed by January the update was less than a week later 2 weeks before January.When pausing live TV you only have 5 minutes of pausing and I don’t understand why it can’t be longer but maybe it will over time , they seem to be improving functions all the time.I have tried alot of tuners in 15 years including the gen 2 tablo and none have been reliable for consistent reception for the 7- 3.0 stationsI’m getting now. Like I said I’m in a area that is vary difficult to get any reception at all and I have a vary good antenna now with a rotor.When watching 1.0 stations I would be constantly adjusting the antenna trying to find the sweet spot for each and every channel and now with the 3.0 channels on some days I can turn the antenna 360 degrees and never lose reception, unbelievable.It’s a good unit with lots of upside with the software updates which are automatically downloaded because nobody wants to deal with updating.