A lot of people are kind of scratching their heads over yesterday’s announcement of Aereo. It’s a streaming TV service for smartphones, tablets, and Internet-enabled TVs launching March 14th in New York City and presumably planning to come to other markets soon after that. But it doesn’t stream on-demand movies or shows from HBO or sports from ESPN or news from CNN. It only streams local broadcast stations. So your local NBC or Fox or CBS. No cable.
Aereo will charge customers $12 a month. For that, they get an antenna to receive not only broadcast TV signals, but also a digital video recorder in the sky that can store up to 40 hours of shows. Cable channels are not available because their content is transmitted through wires and satellites and not over the public airwaves.
My first thought here: you know what else streams broadcast television signals? THE SKY.
Aereo has a lot of big name investors but the broadcasters won’t be very happy about this, their signal is being used without permission or compensation.
Although you know who else uses that signal wihtout permission or compensation? THE SKY.
Cable companies might get irked and/or litigious as well since this could encourage people to ditch cable.
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