r/cordcutters•
supern8ural

ATSC 3.0 component tuners?

I looked into this a few years ago but didn't really find anything, ended up buying a cheap PVR just to get a tuner because the TV in my living room was an old (circa 2010) Sony whose channel guide was not OTA but relied on an app that was deprecated (whose (redacted) brilliant idea was that?) I ended up putting the PVR back in the box because while it worked I found myself just looking up a TV guide on my phone instead, and it just added complexity to my already borderline insane living room setup (I collect vintage gear, but that's irrelevant to my post)

Now I'm looking at it again. The big Sony from the living room has been retired to my housemate's bedroom, living room has a circa 2019 LG OLED (oh, the picture on that is amazing) and in my own bedroom is a circa 2020 Sony.

So, I was idly looking at my desk stereo at work today, and I thought to myself, self, if I brought in that old PVR I could make a TV and hook it up to a spare monitor, especially since I'm already using my old Oppo 105 as a USB DAC. Then that made me think about my abortive quest to find an ATSC 3.0 tuner (even though I live in Baltimore, which is supposedly an ATSC 3.0 test area, I have yet to see an OTA 4k broadcast, although the only time I really watch broadcast is for sports stuff like the Super Bowl where the PQ is better than streaming and something I want to watch is actually on) so I figured I would look online and see if there was anything available now, a couple years since my last search.

I'm still not really finding anything. What I am finding is talk of ATSC 1.0 being sunset in a couple years (2028-2030 to be exact) and out of all the TVs and tuners I own only one actually can receive ATSC 3.0 broadcasts (the Sony in my bedroom). TV manufacturers that used to include ATSC 3.0 tuners are dropping them, and the one product that I considered buying but ended up not (due to cost), the Silicondust HDHomerun 4k, is apparently sort of useless because of a fight about DRM.

I could either go down a rabbit hole of searching about this, or just ask a question and see if anyone knows of a good summary of the issues and more importantly if there is in fact a viable tuner box I can buy, or is this as big a mess as it seems?

Right now it seems that this has the potential to be as big a deal as the original analog sunset that feels like so long ago (well, I guess we really did start seeing DTV OTA almost 20 years ago) but the difference is literally nobody is talking about this new transition. (I still have two converter boxes packed away from back then; just in case I find an awesome vintage TV that I can't just let die...) And when most new TVs are sold without a tuner that could theoretically be required in 2028, this just seems crazy.

Posted Nov 14, 2025, 7:01 PM UTC

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