How I Watched the Super Bowl in HD Over The Air

If you’ve cut the proverbial cord to end the ever-increasing cable TV subscription, you’re not alone. One of the greatest challenges with this decision, however, is how to watch sports and other live events. You can subscribe to the streaming channel, but while Peacock might have Premier League Soccer, Fubo has FA Cup soccer. MLS soccer? Hulu Live, SlingTV, and YouTube TV all have many of the games, but they end up being almost as expensive as cable, so not very practical for just one category. Then there are the really big sporting events like the Olympics, The FIFA World Cup, and the Super Bowl, the latter of which was yesterday.

In an endless jockeying for subscribers, the Super Bowl’s official English-language stream was on Paramount+, however, and if you didn’t have that set up, you were out of luck, unable to watch two great NFL teams battle for the title. Back in the day, you’d have an antenna hooked up to your TV and just tune in the broadcast, making that far easier than the modern, highly fragmented media world. So what happened to broadcast TV?

Turns out that it’s been battered and beaten up by cable and streaming, but it’s still around. Not only is it still around, but there are modern protocols to allow HD over-the-air (commonly called “OTA”) channels and lots of low-budget nostalgia-focused channels like MeTV on “side frequencies”. In an urban area, you can likely receive 75 or more channels – free! – with just some rudimentary gear.

OVER THE AIR: ATSC 1.0 -> ATSC 3.0

The Federal Communications Commission has been careful over the last few decades to ensure that the average American who was fine with broadcast TV would retain access to primary channels if they chose not to subscribe to cable TV. The transition was a big one because analog TV broadcast changed to digital, as defined as the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 1.0 standard.

That transition happened back in 1997 and a variety of companies offered small, inexpensive “digital TV” boxes, functionality that’s now integrated into your smart TV! In fact, you can plug an antenna into your current TV and watch a surprising amount of broadcast TV programming without any other gear.

More recently, the industry has mostly endorsed the ATSC 3.0 spec, which offers up-to 4K resolution and much higher quality audio (including Dolby), all free and over the air. ATSC 3.0 is also known as “NextGenTV” by the industry, though many TV manufacturers seem less than enthused about having to support the standard when relatively few broadcasters have made the jump to full ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. A classic tech chicken-and-egg problem.

DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

The most contentious part of ATSC 3.0 is that it adds support for broadcasters to control their broadcast signal by adding Digital Rights Management (DRM). With DRM the over-the-air channel is encrypted and cannot be viewed without a decryption device.

But don’t throw in the towel, because at this juncture, most of the modern ATSC 3.0 tuners either have DRM decoding support or have plans to introduce it very soon. For it to work your device will also need an Internet connection, but that’s just how the DRM handshake works (the tuner has to ask for the current decode key, essentially).

Update: Industry insiders report that “In January 2024, a new ATSC 3.0 tuner was announced that can decode DRM-protected content without needing an internet connection. This tuner uses alternative methods for device authorization, likely involving secure storage of keys on the device itself.”

Adding to the complexity, SmartTV titan LG tripped up with some patents it failed to license when it implemented ATSC 3.0 and after getting into some legal hot water decided to stop supporting ATSC 3.0 entirely. On the other hand, Sony, Hisense, Samsung,  and TCL have it built into their televisions, some LG seem to support ATSC 3.0 anyway, and, as I’ll explain in a moment, external NextGenTV tuner boxes have this capability, meaning you can utilize it even if you have a non-comforming television.

ALL ABOUT THE TECH

When I realized that I needed a Paramount+ subscription that I didn’t have, and have long-since canceled my Xfinity cable TV service, I was left shut out from the big game. Or was I? Turns out that I have a very modern digital TV antenna and a state-of-the-art Zapperbox M1 ATSC 3.0 compatible TV tuner box. An investment up front (it’s about $250), but honestly, less than two months of my now-canceled cable TV subscription, with no required subscriptions or additional gear.

Zapperbox M1 ATSC 3.0 compatible TV tuner

Other companies offering NextGenTV tuner boxes include Tablo and HD HomeRun, though those are still “in beta” with their DRM decoding support.

The antenna I have is a Televes unit and was fairly spendy at a bit over $100, but it’s small, sleek looking, and can work perfectly well indoors. No climbing on the roof or complaints from the HOA necessary. In fact, I have mine sitting on the floor by my TV and it worked just fine for the big game broadcast!

One mind-boggling change with this over-the-air experience is that these tuner boxes include program guides, just like the on-screen guide from DishTV or cable TV, but it’s just the free channels that you actually receive. Pay a few dollars more (about $25/yr) and you can have a few weeks of future program schedule too, allowing you to queue up DVR recordings of your favorite broadcast shows too.

Yes, these devices all include DVR capabilities, and your recording limit is only limited by the size of the attached device. For the Zapperbox M1, I just slipped in a 128GB MicroSD card (about $25) and have space for hundreds of hours of recordings.

I have the Zapperbox plugged into my big Vizio 4K television as just another HDMI input, and it works surprisingly well. The tuner includes a ‘scan for channels’ feature that can be used every time you fiddle with – or upgrade! – your antenna too, ensuring you have the chance to watch the maximum number of channels.

AND SO THE SUPER BOWL

The long and short of it is that by having this all set up, when I switched to the NextGenTV input I used the included Zapperbox remote control to jump to the program grid, found “Super Bowl LVIII”, selected it, and was watching the game in full HD. Crystal clear, great sound, all without having to subscribe to yet another streaming service or get cable TV back online.

A friend told me he did the same for even less by installing a $39 old-school antenna on his roof and using the tuner built into his LG TV: In his area the channel wasn’t protected by DRM and he reported that it worked beautifully. $39 versus how much you’re currently paying for cable or a TV streaming bundle. Tempting, yes?

The future of over-the-air broadcast remains pretty bright because the gov’t is promising to keep it alive, but now that DRM is part of the picture, it’s possible that the big broadcast channels (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, etc) might require a paid subscription to allow decryption. That would really stink, but nothing’s been announced, so, fingers crossed, that won’t be an issue for a very long time. Meanwhile, hurray for the KC Chiefs on a fantastic game, and thanks to Zapperbox for the tech required to watch it on my big Vizio TV!

Disclosure: Zapperbox sent me the M1 tuner and Televes antenna for testing and review purposes. Obviously, it works really well!