On Friday, television broadcast association Pearl TV filed a scathing letter to the FCC in response to the thousands of consumers who wrote in to the commission complaining that their home gateway products (like the HDHomerun Flex 4k) are unable to tune encrypted broadcasts. I was surprised to see Pearl TV, through their attorneys, essentially admit to selectively enforcing their DRM rules to favor one tuning device type and maker over another.
I break it down in my latest video.
A gateway device allows a single antenna connection for bringing digital TV signals into the home and available on the local Wi-Fi or ethernet network. Any device with a screen can watch the content, and most gateway devices also offer a centralized DVR for recordings. Essentially gateway users can watch TV by just pulling up an app on any device.
Gateways are popular among cord cutters because they replicate many of the features that come with expensive streaming and cable TV plans. But when consumers “cut the cord,” broadcasters lose cable & streaming retransmission fees that make up a sizable portion of their annual revenues.
Broadcasters, through their encryption organization called the A3SA, have not allowed any gateway device to work with their encrypted broadcasts, permitting only single television tuner boxes that require separate antenna connections for each screen they are attached to. These devices can record, but only onto the single device without centralized DVR features found in gateways.
Pearl TV’s filing is misleading the FCC in response to questions about why Pearl’s broadcast partners are locking out home gateway devices that consumers have enjoyed for nearly 20 years. In their ex-parte filing, Pearl asserts:
The root cause why the HDHomeRun device has encountered issues is that it depends on a chipset manufactured by HiSilicon, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., which the Commission has found to be “a national security threat to the integrity of our communications networks” given that the company has been deemed to be “highly susceptible to influence and coercion by the Chinese government.”
Pearl also references a Department of Commerce blacklist in a footnote:
Huawei also has been placed on the US Commerce Department’s “Entity List,” and thus American companies are prohibited from providing sensitive technology to it. 15 C.F.R. § 744, Supp. 4 (2025) (The BI Entity List, as defined in 15 C.F.R. § 744.16, contains the names of “foreign parties subject to specific license requirements for the export, reexport, or in-country transfer of controlled items.”
This filing suggests that any component from a blacklisted company violates the industry’s secret, non-disclosable rules concerning decryption. Their assertion is not even legally correct as a receive-only TV tuner is not a piece of telecommunications infrastructure that these laws and regulations apply to.
But even if those laws did apply, it’s clear the A3SA & Pearl are selectively enforcing this “rule.“
Let’s examine the GT Media X1, currently available on Amazon and other e-commerce sites for approximately $60. It is advertised as “DRM Certified.” My independent testing confirms its ability to play back and record encrypted content, a function exclusive to A3SA certified devices. It is capable of tuning into DRM protected content on a single television, but it is not a gateway device so it only works on a single television.
After removing the casing, I was greeted with the chip circled in red on the Chinese designed and manufactured X1’s motherboard. That chip is made by YMTC, which was added to the Commerce Department’s black list under the Biden administration in 2022.
According to the footnote in the Pearl TV filing, this should be an immediate disqualifier for A3SA certification. Yet, here we are with a device that is fully certified and capable of decrypting content.
This is a prime example of the anti-competitive nature of the opaque selective “regulation” that Pearl and broadcasters are imposing, where they get to decide who has access to the market. Here they continue to give an American company and television viewers the run-around while extending preferential treatment to a foreign entity – even allowing that company to break these opaque rules.
What’s worse, the GT Media box initially shipped to US consumers was running with an Android operating system that was four years out of date containing many known security vulnerabilities that puts consumers at risk and also makes the broadcaster’s encrypted recordings less secure. You can see for yourself in my review of the product.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the GT Media Device did not have the Google Play Store and required sideloading apps from unknown sources, which opens the door to additional vulnerabilities.
While GT Media says they have since rectified some of these security issues, the larger question is why was it approved in the first place? It clearly violates an alleged rule of using a blacklisted component AND has gaping security holes.
But it’s a tuner, not a gateway device. And the broadcast industry has been trying to find ways to kill off gateways once and for all.
All of this comes as a surprise to Silicondust CEO Nick Kelsey, who told me that the A3SA licensing authority never communicated this concern to him. In fact, the A3SA approved the HDHomerun for on-device decryption by issuing Widevine security credentials in 2022 per this email supplied to me by Kelsey. Widevine would only turn over ATSC 3.0 DRM credentials to applicants who were approved by the A3SA.
In 2023, Pearl’s partners granted full NextgenTV certification for the HDHomerun product and software knowing full well what was inside the unit.
So I asked the A3SA for comment. Specifically I wanted to know why they approved the GT Media Box, and to share any records of SiliconDust being notified about the component issue. Here’s what they said:
“Huawei has been on a restricted component list with the U.S. government for more than five years. SiliconDust cannot claim ignorance of U.S. law.. SiliconDust has long been aware of this concern – so it is not new information to them.”
I pressed for more than just this but this was all they were willing to give.
The HDHomerun product hasn’t changed since those certifications and it’s apparent Pearl and their partners clearly knew what components were inside the unit when granting them.
With this blatant example of cooking up rules to push out a technology they don’t like, another question is what are Pearl’s goals here? Is it to protect content or inconvenience consumers and limit their choices for tuning devices?
The market is speaking loudly that gateway devices are the preferred means of watching and recording live television. A quick search of Amazon for “TV tuners” reveals that customers are choosing gateway devices over standalone TV tuners by a large margin. Three of the top four best sellers when searching for “TV tuners” are Tablo ATSC 1.0 gateways.
A similar search for “ATSC 3.0 tuners” reveals that the HDHomerun Flex 4k product is the best selling ATSC 3.0 device.
This new FCC has consistently advocated for open markets, and allowing those markets to dictate the optimal path rather than regulations. I fully support this stance. However, Pearl’s letter clearly indicates their preference to artificially restrict consumer choice. They aim to stifle a thriving cottage industry of US-based gateway hardware and software manufacturers through a private regulatory regime that lacks fairness and transparency.
It’s time the commission regain control of this absurdity, assert that broadcasters do not have the power to regulate device manufacturers, and ban the use of encryption over the public airwaves. It will solve a multitude of problems this transition is facing and will result in a vibrant and competitive marketplace for consumers and broadcasters alike.