Reply from Manhattan
There are USB ATSC tuners. We tired several in 1.0 and not worth the money. Not saying that something won't come-along that is better. Then again it depends what you want to use your USB ports for.
First I want to clear-up some confusion. I'm talking about two different chipsets. One that we announced in this blog the Hisilicon 3798 V200. We have been testing the 3916 in 4K 30, but that was just for the SW. We still have not received the working unit in satellite for the 3798 chipset. This chipset has the ATSC tuner built in. All of these are hybrids. Why should I exclude other people who want ATSC in it. The factories are aware of the desired 4.2.2 in the various video formats. Testing with the 3916 in KODI 4.2.2 worked well.
The other chipset just came out and we are testing the first sample unit. It has some SW work to go, but not anything major that cannot be rectified quickly. We are in discussions on the changes, but its hard right now with Chinese New Year. This unit does not have ATSC, but we have some issues with the 4K in 4.2.2. and possibly 265 in 4.2.2. So they are looking at the possibility using the higher-end decoder/encoders to make this possibly work. Again, bad timing with the holiday. But not unlike us working through the Holidays.
We understand what you guys want. We have been waiting for this Hisilicon chipset for like a years time. It is out of my hands in how fast we can get these since there are limited amount of factories able to get this chipset. Then the factory made the case and samples with a SATA drive built in. Which is very upsetting and we have no clue why they would do this since they now take away a USB 3.0 port. So now they are changing this. Welcome to my world. All of these units will have Android IP in them and perform really well.
Thank you all for your support, comments and suggestions. Working together like this with your support is greatly appreciated!!
Sincerely,
Jeff Schumann
Manhattan-Digital
rickcaylor.websitetoolbox.com/post/4k-8134075?&trail=180