TV Upstart Aereo Offers Free Option 1 Hour of TV a Day for Free As Aereo continues to battle the broadcast industry, the company is shaking up their pricing to try and lure more users toward the service, which streams over the air broadcast networks via the Internet. Previously, the company's only price option was $12 a month for their channel lineup and forty hours worth of DVR space. Now, Aereo's plans come in a variety of new flavors, including a $1 day pass, an $8 20 hour DVR option, and most interestingly, a new free tier. As explained over at the Aereo blog, the new free option allows users to sign up and try the service for one hour a day, with no DVR option. You'll of course also pay overages if your ISP supports them (caps and overages were designed specifically by cable executives to rein in products just like this one). So far Aereo remains only available in New York City, but the company promises to expand significantly soon -- provided they can keep broadcast lawyers at bay. The full pricing: 
|
  japPremium
join:2003-08-10
038xx | still 100% Apple dependent. Bad emergence sequencing to not have Android and MSWindows support yet. TV viewing habits aren't easy to change and early adopter enthusiasm is a powerful behavior change agent for the rest of us. All this wonderful MsM/legal buzz and only Apple users can even test the service. Aereo's legal battle needs to appear like a hindrance to consumer demand and yet they're disallowing most consumers from becoming their voice of demand. I think that's a major strategic blunder. | |
|  | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by jap:.....All this wonderful MsM/legal buzz and only Apple users can even test the service. Aereo's legal battle needs to appear like a hindrance to consumer demand and yet they're disallowing most consumers from becoming their voice of demand. I think that's a major strategic blunder.
Why is it a strategic blunder? Longtime broadcast foe Diller knows he's on very thin ice legally. Any gung-ho platform investment isn't worth the risk. | |
| | | Reviews:
 ·Charter
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by JasonOD :said by jap:.....All this wonderful MsM/legal buzz and only Apple users can even test the service. Aereo's legal battle needs to appear like a hindrance to consumer demand and yet they're disallowing most consumers from becoming their voice of demand. I think that's a major strategic blunder.
Why is it a strategic blunder? Longtime broadcast foe Diller knows he's on very thin ice legally. Any gung-ho platform investment isn't worth the risk. hes not on "thin ice" at all. all you are doing is renting a remote antenna in a so called "ideal" location, and then having a TiVO and slingbox attached to it. whats so illegal about that? This would be like me using my neighbors roof for an antenna, running the cable back to my house, and then paying him a "maintenence" fee. Diller knows hes got a legit service, that is totally legal as long as each person has their "own" antenna, and DVR HDD space(since network DVRs are legal, all they need is their own HDD space). | |
| | | |  BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. So if he gets 1 million people in NY to sign up he's going to have 1 million antennas? | |
| | | | | TheGhostPremium
join:2003-01-03
Lake Forest, IL | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by BF69:So if he gets 1 million people in NY to sign up he's going to have 1 million antennas?
Correct, or at least in theory. Each antenna is around the size of a dime. | |
| | | | | | Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by TheGhost:said by BF69:So if he gets 1 million people in NY to sign up he's going to have 1 million antennas?
Correct, or at least in theory. Each antenna is around the size of a dime. It's ridiculous the amount of hoops that new companies have to jump through today, just to avoid all the legal pitfalls that are holding back innovation.
Think of the kind of services that we could have if it wasn't for a sea of red tape drowning them. | |
| | | | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. If by "red tape" you mean "laws designed to stop people from taking copyrighted content and reselling it without paying the content provider", then yes. | |
| | | | | | | |  morboComplete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000 | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by MyDogHsFleas:If by "red tape" you mean "laws designed to stop people from taking copyrighted content and reselling it without paying the content provider", then yes.
There are all free, publicly available shows. They aren't re-broadcasting cable networks. This is legal. We just need a court case to settle the uncertainty and a la carte will begin. | |
| | | | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by morbo:There are all free, publicly available shows. They aren't re-broadcasting cable networks. This is legal. We just need a court case to settle the uncertainty and a la carte will begin.
For Chrissake. This is like trying to have a discussion with 6th graders about calculus. If you have no clue please just shut your mouth.
Clue: When every show has a copyright notice and the words "all rights reserved" and the disclaimer "any rebroadcast, retransmission, or other use..." you know the rest.... IT AIN'T FREE AND PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. | |
|
| | | | | | | Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| said by MyDogHsFleas:If by "red tape" you mean "laws designed to stop people from taking copyrighted content and reselling it without paying the content provider", then yes. No, I mean the royal mess that is copyright law.
Why don't TV networks digitize their entire library and put it online for a small fee? Because they couldn't even if they wanted to. Just trying to figure out all the licenses required, let alone actually paying for them, would bankrupt the network. So instead the shows sit in the vault rotting away until they're eventually lost forever. Because of copyright.
This may be hard for you to believe, but copyright wasn't invented to line the corporations' pockets. It was a limited right granted to authors as a form of encouragement, before their works inevitably passed into the public domain. It was never meant to last forever, like it does today. It was never meant as a tool for companies to lock up culture. And it was never meant as a way for creators to have absolute, unlimited control over what happens to their works.
If someone wanted to read a novel out loud to a group, they didn't need the author's permission. If they wanted to create illustrations based on a story, they didn't need the author's permission.
Somewhere along the line, the copyright train jumped the tracks and spewed its garbage over everything in sight. Suddenly you need a license to make copies, a license to show it in public, a license to sell it, a license to create new works based on it. Hell, you probably need a license to wipe your ass with it.
Copyright was supposed to encourage art, not lock it down and punish anyone who tries to make use of it. | |
| | | | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. Your narrative is not fact-based I believe. (that is my new nice way of saying "you're making shit up", so people don't go whining to the mods so much about me.) Please show where things changed, where it used to be that it was OK to make copies, to publicly perform or exhibit a work, or to create derivative works based on it. AFAIK that was always the point of the copyright law, to give the author control over and compensation for these things. | |
| | | | | | | | | | Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by MyDogHsFleas:Your narrative is not fact-based I believe. (that is my new nice way of saying "you're making shit up", so people don't go whining to the mods so much about me.) Please show where things changed, where it used to be that it was OK to make copies, to publicly perform or exhibit a work, or to create derivative works based on it. Copyright was originally intended to cover publishing, which originally meant just books. There was no 18th century version of ASCAP going around fining people for performing works without a license.
It was envisioned as a way to encourage authors by giving them a limited time to profit from their works. The idea being that once the copyrights expired they would need to create something new in order to keep earning a living, since they could no longer rely on profits from their previous works, which had become public domain and could be sold or even given away by anyone.
Assigning someone a copyright for their entire life, plus another 50-70 years, is in no way "limited" for them.
said by MyDogHsFleas:AFAIK that was always the point of the copyright law, to give the author control over and compensation for these things. It was a way to give the author control over who could publish their works, so that for a limited time, only the author could profit from it.
Copyrights were never intended to allow authors to control every single aspect of how their works are used.
But since you seem to think that they do, and since everything in today's world is automatically copyrighted as soon as it's created (unlike when copyrights were first created), as the author of this post, I decree that you can only reply to this message if you first strip naked, pour maple syrup all over your body and then roll in feathers. Note that proof of compliance will be necessary. | |
| | | | | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. So I read your entire post twice and nowhere does it answer my question. Show me where the copyright law has changed such that it used to be OK to do the things I listed, and now it isn't. I don't believe you can.
You seem to think that copyright law originally covered only publishing a work, not copying it, performing it, or creating a derivative work. I don't think that's actually true, and am challenging you to prove it. | |
| | | | | | | | | | Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by MyDogHsFleas:So I read your entire post twice and nowhere does it answer my question. And you failed to post proof that you had rolled naked in maple syrup and feathers.
Why do you think it's OK to violate my author's right to decide how my work is used? I've decided that it can only be replied to if you satisfy the above conditions.
Or are you admitting that copyrights don't provide an author with the absolute right to decide exactly how their work is used? | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. Are you just gonna be a dick, or are you going to put up or shut up? | |
| | | | | | | | | | Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by MyDogHsFleas:Are you just gonna be a dick, or are you going to put up or shut up? The reason i haven't posted any links is that I can't find a government source that gives a comprehensive history of copyright and I have a feeling that you'll just dismiss any other source of information I might post as being unreliable or inaccurate.
Still...
Why is it you claim that copyrights give authors absolute control over all aspects of how their works are used, but when I put some admittedly silly requirements on my messages, you just ignore them?
Everything in the US is automatically copyrighted at the time of creation. That's a fact and can be verified by any source. Do you dispute this?
Since my messages are copyrighted automatically, that makes me an author and under copyright law should give me just as many rights over my posts as it does to book authors or even filmmakers.
If the copyright holder of a film can place arbitrary restrictions on their works, like not showing it in public without a license, why can't I place silly restrictions on my messages and have them be just as valid?
Are you going to argue that authors only have the right to impose restrictions that others think are reasonable? Because there are a lot of restrictions on various copyrighted works that I don't think are reasonable.
Are you going to argue that such rights only apply when a work has commercial value? Because I can think of a hell of a lot of copyrighted works that no longer have any commercial value.
You apparently support an author's right to control how and where their works are used, but yet you freely ignore the restrictions I put on my messages in blatant defiance of the authors' rights that you supposedly support. It almost seems like you feel you can simply ignore an author's rights whenever you don't agree with them. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. a) I don't care if it's a government source. I want ANY source.
b) I'm completely ignoring your silly "requirements" to read your messages, so get over it. | |
|
| | | | | | | I hope not and hold out that by that time the light of day is shown and he can use one antenna per city for all subscribers.
It is not like he is taking a signal, decoding it, encoding it and then rebroadcasting it. He is simply taking a signal and sending it on down the line. | |
| | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by Skippy25:It is not like he is taking a signal, decoding it, encoding it and then rebroadcasting it. He is simply taking a signal and sending it on down the line.
Completely false. He is in fact recoding the audio/video for streaming to Internet connected devices, and also recording it for later replay. | |
| | | | | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. Not sure how you came up with "Completely false", but OK.
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another. This is usually done to incompatible or obsolete data in order to convert it into a more suitable format.
In true transcoding, the bitstream format of one file is changed from one to another without it undergoing another complete decoding and encoding process.
Understanding the process helps you substantiate a base for your argument. Otherwise, you just look silly. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. Seriously? "Nyah Nyah it's not decoding it's Transcoding! HAH I WIN!"
Gmafb please.
DOES NOT MATTER what kind of transform it is, legally speaking. | |
|
| | | | | | |  Oh_NoTrogglus normalus
join:2011-05-21
Chicago, IL | said by MyDogHsFleas:said by Skippy25:It is not like he is taking a signal, decoding it, encoding it and then rebroadcasting it. He is simply taking a signal and sending it on down the line.
Completely false. He is in fact recoding the audio/video for streaming to Internet connected devices, and also recording it for later replay. Wrong, a customer is leasing the DVR equipment connected to the antenna and paying for the bandwidth to connect to the customers device.
He is not recoding or streaming anything, the customer is which is 100% legal. | |
|
| | |  XiodenPremium
join:2008-06-10
Monticello, NY
kudos:1 | A company not that long ago tried streaming DVD's over the internet under the guise of "One DVD and one DVD Player per stream". Said company was sued and isn't offering that service anymore. | |
| | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. As was this company, but it won it's first round. Lets see how it all plays out in the end though. | |
| | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by Skippy25:As was this company, but it won it's first round. Lets see how it all plays out in the end though.
They only "won" not getting a preliminary injunction slapped on them which would put them out of business instantly. That was a very very low bar they jumped over. The real battle will be at trial. | |
| | | | | | | | | Re: still 100% Apple dependent. I wont argue that, but they did convince a judge that it was not as infringing on their rights as they think it is and thus were not ordered to stop as it was harming them. | |
| | | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. said by Skippy25:I wont argue that, but they did convince a judge that it was not as infringing on their rights as they think it is and thus were not ordered to stop as it was harming them.
Not at all. They convinced a judge that the economic harm to Aereo if the injunction were granted would be extreme, and the economic harm to the local broadcasters if it were not granted would be material but not extreme. There was absolutely no consideration of infringement, that is what is decided at trial.
Try actually doing some research and reading the decision as I did. Don't believe the spin from people who have an agenda. There is a surprising amount of outright lies mixed in with the exaggerations and framings. | |
|
| | | | | | They were not just sued. They were found to be in violation of the content owners' copyright. | |
|
| | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Apparently ChubbySumo gets butt hurt and whines to mods if someone calls him out on making stuff up and posting it like it was well known truth. Get over it dude. You ARE in fact completely making stuff up and posting it like it was truth. Read ANY article on the Aereo case and the ALL SAY that there are significant legal questions that remain to be decided. | |
| | | | | Reviews:
·Charter
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. what articles are you reading? your last response was a blatant troll, and was extremely off topic, so, im sure im not the only one who reported it. I keep my stuff on topic, and I would hope that if I didnt, someone would report it as well, since it helps keep the forums clean from trolls and spam.
I am reading current case law, and current laws on the books. Again, i point out that what Aereo is doing is akin to me putting an antenna on my neighbors roof(no matter distance), hooking it up to a DVR, and then streaming it to me(in any way). I am leasing the space, and have full control of the DVR with him having no access, therefore, its totally legal. I had to look these up when my uncle wanted to do exactly that because his house sits in a signal "dead" zone, only getting 1 channel OTA. He also did not get satellite signals, and no telecos would run out there, so he trenched a cable to his neighbors house about 1/2 a mile away, put up an antenna on leased property, and with a couple of line amps, he went on his merry way. Its legal as long as no two people are using the same antenna at the same time, and as long as your DVR space is managed(accessible) by you and you alone. Instead of looking at it as a "whole" model, look at the different parts of it, and see that there is specific case law granting them the rights to do exactly what they are, its just not from 1 gigantic case. With Comcasts Remote DVR case, along with a few other cases which have been won that make it legal to lease space for an antenna as long as the lessee has sole use of it, the service as a whole is legal, because then the streaming aspect is covered by the "slingbox" decision, which says its legal to stream your own paid for TV content to yourself.
My personal opinion: On a whole, this shows that broadcasters dont deserve the air they breathe, because they are holding back innovation to support their archaic business model, and people will continue to use services that appeal to them, legal or not, ignoring any laws on the books. | |
| | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. It is not trolling to point out that you are asserting a conclusion that Aereo is operating legally, before the court case is decided which will actually reveal whether it's operating legally or not.
Glad to hear you're reviewing case law. You seem to think this makes it a slam dunk for Aereo. It doesn't, there are significant questions to be decided by the court. Also, if you noticed, the judge determined there WAS economic harm to the local broadcasters caused by Aereo, just not enough to slap an injunction on Aereo before trial. This is not a good sign for Aereo.
There are significant differences between your examples and Aereo, IMO significant enough that you can't just assert it's over and done.
a) Anyone can put up their own antenna and hook it to a TV, clearly. In fact your statement "as long as no two people are using it at the same time" is actually false. Old fashioned CATV did exactly that and was ruled legal back in, I think, the 50s. But in Aereo's case, the user is NOT putting up "their own antenna", there is a third party in the middle who is doing it for them and getting paid. This is exactly where that service that was going to give you your personal DVD player tripped up (what was their name?) It's OK for YOU to rent a DVD and play it, but not OK for SOMEONE ELSE to play it for you for a fee. This is not just me making an argument, this is ACTUALLY WHAT THE OPINION SAID (go read it).
b) The Remote DVR case had nothing to do with an antenna grabbing OTA signal. That case was about whether Comcast, who had ALREADY PAID licensing fees for the content, and was ALREADY streaming the content to users STBs with DVRs, could simply move the DVR capability to a shared network location, under the SAME LICENSE, or whether they had to get a new license. This is quite different from Aereo who is taking the OTA signal with NO LICENSE AT ALL.
c) the Slingbox decision is all about a user being able to PERSONALLY placeshift as well as timeshift their consumer paid content. It is completely NOT about having a third party in the middle who is doing that placeshifting/timeshifting for you. Very different from the Aereo case.
Re your personal opinion: My personal opinion is that you are letting your personal opinion bias your judgement. The way you feel that things SHOULD BE is an entirely different question from how they ARE. It's the courts' job to interpret the laws as they are written, not to make stuff up. For all I know the judge hates the broadcasters as much as you do, but that doesn't mean he can rule arbitrarily, as you seem to want to do.
I am not a fan of local broadcasters either, but that is not the question here, the question is what is legal and not under copyright law. | |
| | | | | | | Reviews:
·Charter
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. I wonder how much you make to try and dispute this? Seriously, Aereo is just a combination of 4 different services in 1, and should be looked at as such.
1) you are renting a space for an antenna, and someone else is maintaining it. Its legal, its called leasing, and it happens all the time. Are you telling me its illegal now for me to lease stuff? The lease usually covers maintenence costs, so, this aspect is legal. Its just your antenna space, that you leased.
2)remote DVR. The remote DVR decision actually gives the precedent set that having a system that is remote to you(meaning not near you) is legal as long as no one else can use it or access its content. Only you control your DVR portion, so, its legal. Yes, this case was in relation to Comcasts use of "paid" content, but why would it not apply to any remote DVR? This goes all the way back to the sony v Betamax decision. time shifting is legal, therefore, remote time shifting is too. Its not really about the specifics, but the overall precedent that was set. It made remote DVRs legal, because it was nothing more than a placeshifted DVR(this also relied on the slingbox decision, read below for more).
3 and 4) The slingbox decision really is two parted. First, slingbox asserted that since you already paid for and received the content, you can "placeshift" and choose to watch it anywhere if and only if you obtained it legally, and second, Slingbox asserted that it did not have to, nor did you, have to pay additional copyright fees for that placeshift content, because you are within your rights to view it in any manner that you wish(often refered to as "viewing device control"). In the fist part, Slingbox successfully convinced a judge panel that since the content was already stored on a legally acceptable device for "timeshifting", then why could one not watch that anywhere? It would be akin to me putting recordings from my DVR(hey tivo can do this) onto my desktop, then onto my Ipod. Slingbox is just simplifying the process and streaming it over your already paid for internet connections.
In the second part of the decision, broadcasters and rights holders argued that they would lose significant business, and slingbox should have to pay a fee, or its users pay a fee for the proper rights to "restream" a recording over the internet. Since copyright laws allow for "personal use", as slingbox argued it, and since slingboxs' products only allowed one to get the streams by signing into a service, it filtered out "open" internet streaming, and forced it into that "personal use" space, because only the owner or their family could get access to the slingbox content. Slingbox also argue, successfully, that broadcasters would lose no business, because in order for slingbox to work, you had to have a cable, satallite, or OTA signal in the first place, and that since their products and internet connections of its users only allowed for 2 streams at once, there was no problem of an "open" stream, and that if the broadcasters ever felt that there was, they could file the appropriate DMCA paperwork to have it cut off.
In conclusion, since all of these services have been deemed legal in the past, the service Aereo is providing is akin to a combination of several services into 1 simplified service, where all parts that make up the whole are legal. Also, since the broadcasters put the signals out there for free over the air, then why does anyone have to pay a "retransmission consent" fee at all. I think thats the big thing the broadcasters are trying to argue, is that they will "lose" a significant amount in retrans fees. I think the underlying goal of all this from Barry Diller is to oppose and change retransmission consent fees(and smash them entirely). While all parts of the service may be legal, what is the underlying goal of the broadcasters, because they are going to gain viewers from this service, not lose, so, that means there ads are worth more. | |
| | | | | | | | Reviews:
·Mediacom
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: still 100% Apple dependent. chubby, this is quite a mix of interesting/relevant content and silly completely inane and misdirected stuff. So, better than before.
Let's deal with the silly/inane/misdirected first.
a) "how much you make to dispute this" wow this is just lame. Do you really have such a sense of inflated self importance that you think some company would pay someone to dispute your freakin blog posts on some biased website? I just do this as a distraction from boredom with my life and work, frankly.
b) "since broadcasters put the signals out for free over the air why does anyone have to pay a retransmission fee at all" wow you really don't understand copyright at all do you. Just because I CAN copy/retransmit/republish something doesn't mean it's LEGAL to do so. Just because I CAN make a copy of a book on a copier, make a copy of a CD on a Web Server, make a copy of a show off an OTA transmission, and then sell/share/rebroadcast that, doesn't mean it's LEGAL to do so. If you don't understand these basics please go read the WikiPedia article on copyright law in the USA.
c) "the broadcasters are going to gain viewers so why do they care" again you are missing the business basics of what's going on, this is a very naive point of view. First, the broadcasters simply gaining viewers gains them zero additional revenue unless those viewers can be measured by the ratings services. Aereo viewers won't be measured since they are not "normal" viewers. Second, retrans fees are a big part of the broadcasters' business model, and Aereo is cutting them out of those fees.
Now the more substantiative.
1) leased antenna: if this is all that Aereo was doing you'd have an argument. But it's not. They are recoding/transcoding the broadcasts for Internet streaming, and they are recording them for later streamed viewing.
2) remote DVR: the big difference is that you don't own the DVR with Aereo. the "DVR" is in actuality an IT infrastructure that is shared by many and is in effect a video-on-demand service, which does require a license from the content owner.
3) slingbox decision: I think everything you said is correct with two minor exceptions: (1) putting the show on your iPod would NOT be covered by the slingbox decision. (2) I believe Slingbox allows only 1 stream at a time to be viewed, not 2. (I have one myself and it is a one-user-at-a-time thing.)
That said, it's not particularly relevant to Aereo. Slingbox is all about a personally owned placeshifting device. Aereo is not that, it is a third-party-owned retransmission service. To explain, imagine Slingbox was not a box you buy, it was a service offered on slingbox.com that you logged in to. Then Sling Media would have to license and pay fees for content, just like hulu.com etc. have to. | |
|
| | japPremium
join:2003-08-10
038xx
1 edit | said by JasonOD :Diller knows he's on very thin ice legally. Any gung-ho platform investment isn't worth the risk. Agreed ... but where's the platform hurdle? Playback is in web browser (HTML5) and there's periodic geo-locale verification to maintain stream. Not alot going on here.
When I posted this I assumed HLS wasn't widely supported outside Apple but it is. It's even native in Android as of Honeycomb.
Possibly Aereo's objectives are something other than what they pretend. I don't rule that out. It's curios how they're going about things. Wish I knew more about iOS. | |
|
Reviews:
 ·Millenicom
 ·AT&T Southeast
·Verizon Wireless..
| Aereo New Pricing. I read the fine print and they have a whopper of a problem. They stated that the antenna you want to access, "your" antenna, may not be available due to others using it. One of the arguments they have used to keep the broadcasters at bay is that the antenna and the DVR are almost totally controlled by the subscriber leasing the antenna and DVR. If "my" antenna can be used by another subscriber, that argument is false. These guys are going to get put out of business due to the nonsensical arguments they present as justification for not paying content providers or retransmission consent fees. If you say in court that your service works one way, but have terms of service that say it operates significantly differently, how well do you think you will do when the broadcasters show that you are lying in court? | |
| | Reviews:
·Charter
| Re: Aereo New Pricing. its a leased antenna, who cares which one you get when you are requesting one? Why should one have to pay to stream something they can get for themselves for a reasonable cost(TV tuner card, antenna in a good location, and a slingbox, and a DVR program of some sort). Your a premium member, I wonder which broadcaster paid for your premium membership? seriously, just because it can be used by someone else does not mean that you will be using it at the same time. Their argument is that each sub uses 1 antenna at 1 time. Its legal. Again, its the same premise as me doing all that same shit for myself(DVR, slingbox, remote antenna, ect). I can pick it up over the air for free, thus, I dont have to pay retrans fees. If they didnt want it free, sell it to a cable premium network. Its free OTA, why should they get a payment for something any one of us could do anyways? | |
| | | Reviews:
·Millenicom
·AT&T Southeast
·Verizon Wireless..
| Re: Aereo New Pricing. I did not get compensation from a broadcast television to pay for my membership. I actually think that OTA owners who went the re-transmission route set themselves up for extortion from the big networks. All the OTA owners should have stayed must carry, which would have forced the networks to face the need to cut content production costs earlier. That being said, the OTA owners have the right to demand re-transmission consent fees as long as that is the standard way they deal with cable system operators in the area.
If there was no way for my access to be cut off by other subscribers normal activities, than the business model resembles the use of remote antennas connected to DVRs that the I control exclusively. If I run antenna cables to a neighbor's roof mounted antennas and feed the signal to my DVRs, then I am in control of the devices at any time. If the DVRs are located in his house, but I have total control over them, then that is similar to them being in my house. The problem arises when the DVRs and antennas are shared among perhaps one hundred households and there is some limitation on how many households can access the DVRs or antennas simultaneously. That is not total control over the device and is not similar to what I would have in my own house with my own antennas. I have seen plenty of roof mounted OTA antenna systems designed to serve apartment buildings. I have never seen one that has a limitation on how many of those apartments can access the antenna simultaneously. Yes, it takes amplifiers and proper splitters to make it work, but it is doable.
Aereo wants to make money in the TV market by being a virtual cable system operator for OTA programming using IPTV. Nifty idea with little infrastructure requirements or costs. After all the final signal has to go over the subscribers ISP access, which they must pay for, including overages. Aereo only has to connect to the internet. It is fairly easy to buy enterprise level internet access in major cities. The problem is they have to make the experience of operating OTA TV extremely similar to what a regular homeowner or apartment dweller would experience using owned or shared assets without any limitations on the numbers of simultaneous users. That is the only way I see they can get out of paying re-transmission consent fees.
Again, I think re-transmission consent fees are a dumb idea, and that ALL the OTA owners should have stayed must carry. But the laws and regulations are what they are, and Aereo needs to pay up, unless they eliminate the possible restrictions. | |
|
| | | »www.multichannel.com/article/480···vice.php
Aereo, a startup whose backers include media mogul Barry Diller, is launching a subscription service in New York City that provides live broadcast TV channels and network-based DVR over the Internet for $12 per month, pitched as an alternative to cable TV -- a proposition that may earn a legal fight from the broadcast industry.
Aereo's service is based on dime-size antennas. In New York, these are housed in giant arrays somewhere in Brooklyn, which receive over-the-air TV signals and transcode them in real time for delivery to Apple iPhones and iPads and other devices, without the need for a set-top box.
The company's legal justification: Each antenna is dedicated to an individual Aereo subscriber, so the service isn't subject to the same retransmission laws that pay-TV operators are. Similarly, the DVR service -- which provides up to 40 hours of storage per account -- allocates dedicated storage to each user so as not run afoul of copyright laws.
As Diller, chairman of Internet company IAC, put it: "Every little antenna essentially has a consumer's name on it." He spoke at Aereo's launch press conference Tuesday at IAC's Manhattan headquarters.
Aereo founder and CEO Chet Kanojia, asked whether the company expects to be on the receiving end of litigation, responded, "We understand that there will be challenges... We are building a transformative business and there will be challenges."
Only a fool would invest in this flaky company. Their whole business plan rests solely on an untested legal theory that is partially based on a lie and as time passes their story of how the devices work changes.
There is no way they're "housing" dedicated receivers and antennas for each of their subscribers. Once the feds (and lawyers) start looking into their operation and see the discrepancies, the company will go belly up like megaupload and fulltiltpoker. | |
| | | Reviews:
·Millenicom
·AT&T Southeast
·Verizon Wireless..
| Re: Aereo New Pricing. I want to see the wiring for the set up they claim to have. Each small antenna having a individual copper lead to a separate tuner that only it uses. That unique tuner connected to individual unique hard disk drive. The tuner and the HDD are then connected to a very large switch, which then connects to the internet. That is a lot of small diameter copper wires snaking around. I do not believe they exist.
I have seen pictures of hundreds of those small antennas mounted on a metal plate. I bet they are all linked together on the plate or though a separate slightly offset backing plate and feed into a single extremely high grade coaxial cable. The setup is a large antenna with lots of little elements. If one of those little antennas could really tune in ATSC signals reliably, Barry Diller should have gone into the OTA antenna business. He would have made some decent money. I have seen portable ATSC TVs at Radio Shack, Best Buy, and Fry's and they all had much bigger antennas than those. The smallest indoor or portable ATSC antennas I have purchased have at least 10 times the metal antenna material.
The coaxial cable then probably goes to a splitter to feed a number of tuners. The number of tuners is less than the number of subscribers. That is where I think the part of the shared access is and why they state in the TOS that you may not be able to access the service at all times.
I also do not think each subscriber is getting their own HDD for the DVR. I bet they are using shared HDDs. Since you can only have one read/write session for each HDD at any moment in time, that would also cause the lack of uninterrupted access. The lack of access may be of a very short duration, but it would exist.
If Barry Diller had truly done the individual set up for each subscriber, he probably could have used a more normal common antenna feeding the subscribers separate individually controlled tuners and separate individually controlled HDD DVRs. That type of individual subscriber setup would be a much stronger business case against the OTA broadcasters claims of infringement. I could support that as a legitimate business that is not infringing on the OTA broadcasters rights. But then he would be charging 10 times the amount he is presently to run such an individualized service. I doubt there is a large market for such a service at $120/month. He lost the legal business case with the shared tuners and DVRs.
| |
| | | | | | Re: Aereo New Pricing. The whole array of tiny antennas is just a dog and pony show for the investors and lawyers. During the discovery process of the lawsuit the premises will be searched to see how the process actually works. Chances are they will find exactly what you describe. With the storage array they could be using disk deduplication like what is found in ZFS which basically has filesystem automaticaly detect duplicate files and have them share the same sectors on the hard drive. | |
|
Reviews:
 ·ooma
·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
| free alternatives.. check out barrydriller.com once you register you can watch OTA for free.. now cable companies can't use buying broadcast basic to antenna viewers who can't get a good signal!
we'll see how long this lasts b4 the big companies go after these startups.. abc, nbc, cbs, fox etc.. | |
| | | | Re: free alternatives.. said by tmc8080:check out barrydriller.com once you register you can watch OTA for free.. now cable companies can't use buying broadcast basic to antenna viewers who can't get a good signal!
we'll see how long this lasts b4 the big companies go after these startups.. abc, nbc, cbs, fox etc..
Is that Kato Kaelin? | |
|
| |
|
|
