Verizon FiOS → FiOS and Aereo

A year and a half ago, as the cost of my Optimum "triple play" package kept creeping incessantly upwards, Aereo launched. I canceled Optimum TV and phone (got VOIPO instead) and switched to Aereo. Everything worked amazingly well.

Then, a few months ago Verizon offered me FiOS for $35/month, increasing to $55 for year two, at the same time that Optimum increased their internet rates to $60 (both 15/5 Mbit/sec). So I switched at the end of last year. Now I'm noticing that the Aereo streaming video quality seems to be getting worse and worse. Has anyone else noticed this?

My speculation: I'm wondering whether Verizon is playing the same game with Aereo that they are playing with Netflix. Aereo might be willing to pay up in the same way, but presumably not before they find out from the Supreme Court whether they are allowed to operate. Thoughts?

I bet that Aereo is simply getting hit like the rest of the web sites. Verizon's connections to the Internet haven't been maintained adequately. Aereo probably doesn't register enough of a bandwidth blip to be singled out (unless it was for blatantly anti-competitive reasons) and is just an indication of how poor FiOS is getting at delivering service.

Who's Aereo using to provide their bandwidth? Are you using a local service or a remote service?

Not sure who Aereo is using (or how I would find out), and I don't understand what you mean by local or remote service. Apologies, I'm just a consumer, not a techie!

Aereo offers services in major cities. If you were using one across the country, that'd be a bit more difficult than using one for your area.

Local and remote aren't the right terms. I should have used "close" and "distant".

I see. I live near NYC, and am watching NYC channels on Aereo. I guess that would make it "close".

(Actually, as I understand it, Aereo doesn't allow you to watch while you are physically outside the local broadcast zone - so, for instance, I can't go to Baltimore and watch NYC Aereo on an iPad there. There are probably ways around this, but if I recall correctly, the T&C say that this isn't allowed.)

I never played with Aereo. All I know about it are how the networks are throwing a fit over it because they're greedy.

I'm sure with a VPN you could get around anything you want; and if they block public VPN and you really want to watch it, you find ways around that too.

I have a Slingbox, so Aereo was just something that I never actually looked in to.

What I can't figure out about Aereo is how they can get reception on all those TV channels with an antenna the size of a dime. The UHF rooftop antenna on my house is smaller than a VHF antenna, but it's many times the size of a dime.

from what i have read and it could be wrong its because they use a raid of them. they have one antenna for each customer but there are hundreds side by side. i also assume they are placing them close to the transmitters then most people are.

I believe it can be summed up with "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

Aereo's NYC data center (and antenna "farm") is in Brooklyn.

I understand that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of those dime-size antennas side by side. Supposedly each antenna supplies one customer, which is why Aereo claims the service is is not a public performance. I tend to agree with dfwguy's response...

See »techcrunch.com/2014/04/1 ··· -ruling/. An individual antenna only receives one frequency at a time and is "tuned" to receive the frequency of the specific channel the customer is requesting at any given time. That, plus the fact that the channels are all digital now, means that the antennas don't have to have the same full native frequency range and sensitivity that would be required by a consumer using an antenna at their own home.

The don't really show much technical detail in the video at this link, but what they say is somewhat revealing in understanding why the antennas can be so small. And the small size assists in the custom tuning thing which assists in driving down the size to begin with.

I think some of what they say in the video was said at a "wave the hand as a magician" level.

I see what you're saying...but that small piece of metal isn't going to be tuned well enough to pick up much of anything. UHF signals, smaller wavelength than VHF; is still far beyond the 4 or 5 ghz that little antenna was designed to pick up.

Antennas are antennas...digital or analog doesn't mean anything. Hell, you had better luck getting analog with a really tiny antenna than you *ever* will with digital. In case you hadn't noticed, the 8VSB modulation we use for digital is really kind of poor. The digital signals don't travel nearly as far and the usual multipath leaves 8VSB useless.

They can claim how it tunes one at a time, and how it doesn't need the bandwidth a normal antenna needs...yadda-yadda-bs. I don't know how much signal the towers put out, or how far the datacenter is for them. Buildings cause multipath; that cube they built, causes multipath...all those antennas...cause multipath.

I think the antennas are just smoke.

From my understanding of placeshifting; the signal source isn't what's as important as the tuner. If you were streaming the same channel from the same tuner to 20 people; that would violate law. However, if you had 20 people hooked up to the same antenna using 20 separate tuners....then that's just "Community Antenna" hookup; which I believe is still legal as there's a huge distinction between relaying a signal down a piece of coax and splitting it off vs receiving that signal and remodulating it.

The article also says they're waiting for them to decide if it's public or private performance. Several federal judges over the years have held internet streaming in this manner is not public. Slingbox had the same issue and the judges sided with them. It's a private stream from a private hardware from a private tuner. Look at A2BTV for example; you send them your DirecTV and Dish network hardware and they'll host a slingbox for you. Do they have an indvidual satellite dish per box? No. They have a couple set up in a multiplexing scheme so they can spread that one dish out to as many receievers as they want.

The secret problem behind all this is the remotely-hosted DVR; which has been legally questionable before. I think CableVision did the same thing and a judge found THAT wasn't legal. Japan strictly forbids most forms of remote-DVR or placeshifting.

They can claim what they want; I know enough about antennas to know that unless you're within 300 yds of the antenna with *nothing* in the way; you're not going to get much. They're waving the wand and probably pumping them in from a rooftop antenna across the street on an apartment building.

Actually the judge in the CableVision case found in *favor* of CableVision, which wanted to set up a remote DVR service but was sued by broadcasters. In fact, that decision is part of what spurred Barry Diller and his buddies to start Aereo, and it's part of their argument for its legality.

Most NY channels are broadcast from downtown Manhattan or nearby, which is probably why it works to have the antennas in Brooklyn just a mile or two away. While their technical explanations might involve a lot of hand waving (perhaps because they don't want to give away too much), I doubt they are lying about the basic fact that each customer gets one (actually, two) dedicated dime-size antenna. Their entire legal argument rests on this point: why go through the vast trouble and expense of defending their right to rent out antennas when that's not what they're actually doing?

Which has nothing to do with it. Cablevison pays the broadcast networks a piece of the pie, Aero pays nothing to them. What Aero is doing can't be legal.

You're right. I'm confusing the Cablevision info I read in the legal article with all the Japan stuff; as they intertwined them in a confusing manner.I seem to recall a point in history where cable TV was basically being hooked up to an antenna farm and operators didn't have to pay. The TV industry is claiming Aereo is hurting their business model; which would imply that they are in the business of selling their channel to tv providers. The only reason they created this model was because of the 1992 act that created "must-carry" while simultaneously giving stations the ability to have a re-transmission agreement. I seem to recall the original way stations made money was advertising.

The problem with the law on placeshifting is there aren't any. The technology has come up in the last few years, and current law only states it is to not impede technological advancement. If Aereo is charging you a small rental fee for hardware, plus bandwidth and operational costs; they can argue they're not reselling anything but providing a service that allows someone to do this.

Correct, until the networks got greedy a few years ago and figured this was another way to make money, by charging what is free over the air. That's one of the reasons everyone's bills have gone up. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

That's exactly what they argued before the Supreme Court a few days ago. And the broadcasters argued that Aereo was "retransmitting" their signal as a "public performance". We'll get the Supreme's answer in June.

Going back to my original post: Aereo competes directly with Verizon in that if I didn't have Aereo, I'd have to get TV via some other method (such as FiOS - although they refuse to provide FiOS TV in my town; long story). That's why I find it interesting that the Aereo streaming video quality has been so terrible lately.

Because that nonsense is what allows them to exist in the first place. It's the only possible mechanism by which they have a chance of being declared legal. Right or wrong, the law is what the law is, and they don't have the kind of finances to buy a new one, especially compared to those they're fighting.