Great upbeat review of a product which has exceptional receiver sensitivity for both ATSC 1.0 and the newer NexGen ATSC 3.0 over the air terrestrial broadcasts. Great for DXers. Remember your mileage may vary, but many will undoubtedly find purchasing this box a tempting investment. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, I would say over my TV Tuner, and even my older Channel Master DVR I own, the older ATSC 1.0 signals may even be a tad better, but hard to qualify that. We will see how things are going after a good season using my Zapperbox M1.
I’m running the Tablo right now and I’m looking to upgrade. I also watch antenna man Tyler who has fantastic video information.. It’s great to see a net user talk about their experiences before shelling out the cash for a new OTA box. Thanks very much for spending the time to talk about the zapper box.
My comment got lost... i too have a zapperbox and love it. I originally had signal strength in the 60s. Added a pre-amp, now im in the 90s. Never lose signal unlessxa major storm.
I have an amp on mine as well but forget brand and model. Without it I think I did not get much at all. Been years since I looked. How many miles are you away from your towers?
@@MacSociety I'm about 30, but lots of trees, not even sure how I get any signal at all. I use a cimple co adjustable. I put a link in my first comment.. I think it got wicked because of it. 30 bucks on amazon.
The issue you saw with ATSC 3.0 feed down on Sunday in Sacramento was a broadcaster issue. They were switching to a backup encoder and did not care about doing any sort of PSA!
You may want to consider having this antenna aimed better for one set of channels and adding a 2nd antenna for the other set. It costs less than a rotor and since there are no moving parts, it lasts basically forever.
@@MacSociety it's a temperature inversion that happens as the sun comes up. Signals get deflected off of it and travel further than they normally can with the line of sight.
I need to look into this.. I cut the cord many, many years ago.. I am not even sure what I can get anymore... Now I want to see TJ review the K-Pop channel! ha!
hahaha. Yeh, SF has some interesting channels. I only sporadically get them but yeh, maybe a future TJ does KPOP. haha. Yeh this ZapperBox is doing OK for us now and may work long term as well. In time we shall see how the airwaves treat us.
Thanks for the nice words. Maybe one day I will explore that. I have so many pokers in the fire as they say so just one more poker may make my camel quit on me, lol. Thanks for the ideas.
Not sure, have not explored that, sorry. I think for now it needs Internet connection though but did read someplace that at a future time it may not but best ask the makers of ZapperBox that as I don't have that answer as of now. If I get a chance to simulate that, will let you know.
If I remember right, ours is a Wineguard HD 7697P and was good for 60 miles. At the time that was the one our local Antenna Man (lol) recommended. Being that the towers are over 60, around 65 I think, it is just on the edge. My guess newer better antenna may be had now but I don't have more $$ to throw at it so this Wineguard will have to do. lol
I don't purposely any more. I used to enjoy sports on TV but no longer. I am a Raiders fan so only watch their games when televised. Prime did get some football last I saw, unsure if still now, but I no longer am into sports other than a little football, so does not worry me. I get Netflix, Prime, and Frndly as our 3 streaming services. Prime is more for the free shipping but it comes with TV shows so we get it. Netflix we will we keep for now but may axe later. We enjoyed Stranger Things and Cobra Kai so still holding onto for now. Added Frndly when we cut the cord 2 weeks ago as was cheap and I wanted MeTV and the Hallmark channels so was worth it for the expense. Oh we have a Roku too so have tons of free channels with that. No idea if any sports on there but guessing some. They have the free roku channel.
@@MacSocietyI went to their website’s FAQ and found this info: “Note: at this time you cannot play these recordings on your PC or Mac because we use a proprietary HLS manifest format to make the recording process more efficient. The ability to play "in the clear" recordings on other devices will be added in the future. You will not be able to play secure (DRM protected or encrypted) content on other devices.”
I forgot to add, the black screen is a chip problem that there trying to resolve, so that should hopfully go away. I think I've only had to do a reset through the settings menu once or twice. Usually the red disconnect (not really an off) button gets it done.
Frustrated - no one is showing simple playback functions in their reviews. How responsive is RW/FF? Does it show a preview during FF/RW like TiVo? Can you speed up playback? Instant replay? 30 sec skip? Thanks!
yeh I hit the left arrow a few times to go back far enough to catch something I missed and right arrow to advance 30 seconds as you noted. Used that just today to see a cooking device on a PBS channel my wife liked and wanted to know the name of it. It did the job. ;-)
@MacSociety ; Yeah ... Like right now! ... As something currently going on with the licensing servers causing all encrypted 3.0 channels to go out on the Zapperboxes in many markets. They're currently working hard on a fix. ....
yes, some of my local ATSC 3.0 went out and once I posted in the Zapperbox community, they already had a fix and an download of an update fixed it. Unsure if this is a frequent issue but the 1st time I have seen it.
