Aereo Loses Supreme Court Case

No. Sorry. No can do but thanks for the tip.

 

Of course not...seldom accurate, but never in doubt.

 

As of 11:30AM yesterday, Aereo was shut down or as they said 'paused'.
This email was sent to Aereo users.



A Letter to Our Consumers: Standing Together for Innovation, Progress and Technology - An Update on Aereo
"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress." --Charles Kettering, inventor, entrepreneur, innovator & philanthropist

​

A little over three years ago, our team embarked on a journey to improve the consumer television experience, using technology to create a smart, cloud-based television antenna consumers could use to access live over the air broadcast television.

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision in favor of Aereo, dealing a massive setback to consumers.

As a result of that decision, our case has been returned to the lower Court. We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps. You will be able to access your cloud-based antenna and DVR only until 11:30 a.m. ET today. All of our users will be refunded their last paid month. If you have questions about your account, please email [email protected] or tweet us @AereoSupport.

The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over the air programming belongs to the American public and we believe you should have a right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home, on top of your television or in the cloud.

On behalf of the entire team at Aereo, thank you for the outpouring of support. It has been staggering and we are so grateful for your emails, Tweets and Facebook posts. Keep your voices loud and sign up for updates at ProtectMyAntenna.org - our journey is far from done.

Yours truly,

Chet Kanojia

Founder & CEO

 

In any event, the system is broken; we pay to watch commercials.

 

I think there are a lot of issues once you move from individual DVRs to a single server. It makes the process less transparent as to what is going on.

I was thinking about the efforts that Aereo would have to put in to maintain the independent paths and de-centralized control for each consumer. This technology scales poorly.

 

The DVR most definitely should not be the "kicker" -- it is clearly legal.

And the way a service provider characterizes what he charges -- calling it a subscription fee or a rental fee or maintenance fee or whatever -- should not be determinative.

I think these hypotheticals highlight the difficulty in reaching what after all might be the right policy outcome.

 

I could not (and as of today, still cannot) find an antenna that gets me every local channel. Aereo took care of that for me. I paid them for the use of an antenna they set up locally in a place where I COULD receive every local channel. It was my pleasure to pay them $8/mo to not have to deal with buying and returning countless antennae. Now, I have to do that again. I refuse to pay TWC (soon to be Comcrap) three times that at the minimum for the privilege of receiving the same otherwise free OTA programming.

 

Ok he is reselling something that is no not his to sell

So what if they just sold you the thing for a couple of hundred bucks? No monthly fee. It would seem then it would sort of be just a modern antenna. But charging you an ongoing fee without compensation the owners of the broadcast is the problem. I agree there need to be equal access to free broadcast signals.

 

Not my battlefield as I don't even watch TV.

However...I realize how the capitalistic society operates and if I don't want to participate, I don't. It's the things I can't avoid that get my goat. Sometime though, you have to be outlaw to avoid the things we "can't" avoid.

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/aereo-analysis-scorecard-715312

Winners and losers. Basically, incumbents win and innovators lose (though it's not that black and white)

Aereo has shown what's possible. Here in the Bay Area, I can use http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/ktvu-live-news/vtSfR/?updated (one of many local stations putting their feed out to everyone - of course, they're the owners anyway but this is free and precisely the same as the OTA feed, including ads. The chances are you will be able to buy a box to do this for almost nothing, rather like the first modems had to be built from scratch by your tech department)

 

http://www.law360.com/ip/articles/552744

and so it begins...

 

http://recode.net/2014/06/30/why-the-aereo-shutdown-will-be-a-disaster-for-broadcast-tv/

An interesting aside from a (presumably under 40) techie. Now some are seeing the Aereo case as new versus old.

It hadn't occurred to me, as I'm an old non-smartphone owner, that of course Aereo could be viewed all day in your pocket. And probably was.
(rather like the current U-Verse ad in the endless Xfinity war for features)

 

http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archive...reos-supreme-court-loss-forbes-cross-post.htm

Excellent summary of at least some of the potential knock-on issues, without saying 'the sky is falling'.

 

at http://gigaom.com/2014/07/19/aereos...o-cable-rules-are-rigged-against-internet-tv/

 

Thanks for the updates on this issue, MikeyH.

 

I'm going to ask the obvious since I haven't seen it asked yet, why are we using TV antennas in 2014?

 

Some people use their own antennas because they are content with OTA broadcasts and don't want to pay a cable or satellite company for service.

Some people liked being able to pay Aero for an off-site antenna because Aero was much less expensive than cable or satellite TV because Aero was (a) not paying anything to retransmit content they did not own and (b) they offered only local, OTA content, not premium channels. While I support the latter (which is akin to paying one's local cableco for just "limited basic" channels), the former is clearly shady -- something the Supreme Court recognized in its ruling.

 

Why is that "obvious"?

Granted not everyone can make use of an antenna, and granted a person can clearly not receive cable/satellite specific channels with them...but that does not at all invalidate over-the-air television broadcasts.

Over-the-air does not compress signals, cable and satellite do compress signals. The identical program received over antenna, or cable, or satellite will be presented at its best if an over-the-air antenna can be used. Yes, antenna is what I use. In a sense, cable and satellite are retrograde technologies.

I will admit I live in a fortunate region, I can receive a bit over 70 channels via antenna. And all the ones I need are in high def. Need I say they are all free of cost? For me, if something is worth seeing on cable (and there are things worth seeing), odds are they will make it to Blu-ray and that is just fine with me. I also have a "lifetime subscription" high def Tivo (two tuners) which works with my antenna so I can watch what is important to me in non-real time. Final thing, I've put the equipment in place so I can computer edit (in high def) any Tivo'd program and archive the results to recordable Blu-ray disk. This is "2014".


Next question.

 

I bought a small set of rabbit ears so I could pick up Los Angeles broadcast HD channels. I haven't paid for cable TV in several years.

 

Because cable companies refuse to offer cheaper a la carte packages.

 

I too refuse to stick with cable - since they 'forced' a digital upgrade - more channels but way less reception quality "sorry, you'll have to pay for a complete new recabling" and was blown away by the OTA HD alternatives, on a giant screen too.

Now I have a good few channels OTA, and don't really miss anything (except maybe PBR Bull Riding every week as it used to be).

I'd really like TV programs to come like tracks do on Spotify. Maybe in another 50 years, when it's too late for me.

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...ruptcy?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=technology

Bye bye, thanks for trying anyway.

 

Never to late to go with DirecTV. I find this is a much, much better HD alternative to over-the-air TV. Even with a fairly large 10' antenna, we were getting about two major digital hits per hour, enough to knock the signal silly for about 5 seconds, which is too great an interruption to me. The signal is too fragile in urban areas. I don't dispute that in a perfect area with a great antenna, you can get perfectly acceptable reception. But I've tried it in two separate parts of LA (Chatsworthless and West LA), and it's geshtunkina, fakakta, crapola. DirecTV is far better, has terrific selection, and sounds great to me.

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/aereo-investors-lose-a-956-751094

There are other losers too.