Startup plans to stream broadcast television channels

'Aereo' To Test Copyright Law With Internet-Streaming TV Service [Multichannel News]

A new startup company backed by Barry Diller has launched in the New York City area and proposes to offer a novel way to watch broadcast television. Aereo will give customers access to live programming from FOX, ABC, NBC, and CBS over the Internet.

The service also includes Internet-based DVR functionality and a guide. It will be available for viewing on phones, tablets, and connected TVs, as well as a few devices like Roku and Apple TV. It will also involve a monthly subscription that costs a bit more than Netflix.

But how is Aereo getting around the legal challenges that are sure to start popping up for offering this type of broadcast programming over the Internet? Other startups have attempted to stream over-the-air television, only to find themselves on themselves on the losing side of lawsuits launched by broadcasters.  

Aereo's headquarters is currently housing thousands of thumb-sized TV antennae – one for each Aereo subscriber. The company, with full expectation that broadcasters won't be happy about having their channels streamed over the Internet outside the retransmission consent process, plans to argue that because customers are technically watching TV via their own over-the-air antenna there is no difference whether they're streaming the channels or watching them on their own TV.

If Aereo's strategy is successful against an expected challenge, one wonders whether traditional multichanel providers could do the same thing.

Comments

[Rodrigo]

Right, I've searched evsintexely for an engineering description without success, but I'll contact the company and try to get details. There's no way for users to pick and convert TV signals, both because the data has to be first customized to the user and because a main benefit is to provide quality TV, bypassing blocking by buildings (the antennas are also too small to work efficentlly at VHF/UHF frequencies. According to CNET and a few other sources, Aereo has an antenna farm at a Brooklyn location, with each customer assigned one of those small antennas. It's not clear how that would work. The tiny customer antenna size suggests microwave frequencies, such as WiFi, and it doesn't make sense to use the same antenna to receive TV signals and aslo transmit in duplex to customers (if VHF/UHF, the signals would interfere with broadcast and would not solve the building blockage problem; makes no sense) . So my best guess is that there's a central yagi antenna in Brooklyn aimed at the Empire State building that feeds the various channels to a system that demodulates the digital data then feeds a custom HTML5 stream to/from each customer via a multiplexed distro system that uses a new (or licensed from Verizon, etc.) LTE mobile broadband service that feeds all of those tiny antennas with customized data streams to devices (or via local WiFi access points, which seems unlikely). Very rube Goldberg. Anyone have more info?

[Nate]

Viva la Cord Cutting.