Zapperbox, a supplier of OTA TV DVRs says it hopes to get certified to carry CTA’s NextGen TV logo by NAB New York in mid-October.
The company began shipping its NEXTGEN TV DVR on Aug. 2 and said that boxes with support for playback and recording of encrypted 3.0 channels will ship in October. The Zapperbox has already received A3SA DRM certification—the security protocol for the ATSC 3.0 standard. All existing units will be upgraded with this capability via a software update.
Although all TV sets that support NextGen TV on the market are certified to carry the NextGen TV logo—which allows viewers to take advantage of a wider range of advanced features and make it easier to do field upgrades—only one consumer device on the market, ADTH’s NEXTGEN TV box, carries the NEXTGEN TV logo and began shipping earlier this month.
While ADTH’s device supports the A3SA DRM protocol, the issue of channel encryption has caused one other OTA device maker, Tablo TV to delay the launch of its ATSC 3.0 Tablo ATSC 3.0 QUAD HDMI DVR for NextGenTV, announced in 2022.
Zapperbox also plans to add more DVR features in the future such as the ability to record only new shows, backup, search, support for multiple storage devices, etc.