It’s the company offering a product that can bring live over-the-air broadcast television to multiple viewing devices via a streaming app tied to a connected network. For Silicondust, increased visibility among consumers has come from its HDHomeRun line of network connected TV tuners.
Now, Silicondust is sharing that the latest iteration of its HDHomeRun app offers support for viewing television channels and recordings in the event of an internet outage, including Emergency Alert notifications.
Unlike receivers that connect directly to a television using HDMI, the HDHomeRun device receives broadcast television and makes it available over the viewer’s home network for viewing on the player devices they already own and use.
With the FCC reviewing filings in a docket associated with authorizing the permissive use of the NEXTGEN TV-fueled ATSC 3.0 broadcast television station, Silicondust President and Chief Technology Officer Nick Kelsey notes that several parties offering comments to the Commission “consistently recognize that viewers should continue receiving broadcast television—including Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages—when broadband connectivity is unavailable. We agree that viewers must be able to tune and view broadcast-delivered television channels during an Internet outage.”
This led Silicondust to suggest to the Commission that broadcasters temporarily transmit broadcast channels without DRM encryption while the ecosystem develops and deploys a broadly compatible solution that preserves television reception during Internet outages.
In an ex parte filing made July 9, Silicondust testing found that “broadcast television can continue to operate during an Internet outage using the HDHomeRun video gateway architecture.”
Further, Kelsey explained, “the remaining limitation is confined to DRM encrypted channels. That limitation does not affect ATSC 1.0 channels or ATSC 3.0 channels that are not DRM encrypted. No deployable A3SA-approved approach presently enables DRM encrypted channels to be made available to popular player devices with the same Internet-outage compatibility as unencrypted broadcast channels.”
Silicondust’s value to consumers its ability to act in a manner akin to cable television services in the 1970s, within one’s domicile or office, through a single internet router. Broadcast signals are pulled in via a HD television antenna, and then transported to other TVs in the home or business through an app available on Roku, Android TV, Fire TV, Apple TV, Google TV, XBox and both Mac and Windows-based computers.
Similar to devices such as Tablo, over-the-air reception is determined by line-of-sight to a station’s transmitter; results can widely vary. In a recent test conducted by RBR+TVBR, over-the-air reception of every major New York television station could be had in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., minus WABC-TV. A few miles away in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., with a south-facing hill, not one broadcast TV station was scannable. Such terrain issues are what led to the proliferation of cable television some 60 years ago.
— With reporting by RBR+TVBR in Mesa, Ariz.; Boca Raton, Fla.; and Westchester County, N.Y.
