[live local tv] all hail Aereo ... **** just got real!

If I charged you to watch ABC on my tv I would be violating the law.

 

Why don't you list all of these services and how much they cost per month so we can see how much money is being saved here vs. getting cable/satellite.

 

Well Aereo doesn't charge you to view TV. They charge you for the Antenna use. Every customer has their own independent antenna. This is not rebroadcasting.

 

They are selling you access to content without the approval of the content distributor.

They lost and I support the decision.

 

Aereo's TV Streaming Service Is Illegal, Supreme Court Says

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...s-an-illegal-service-supreme-court-says?sc=tw

 

Leaving off MLB season pass because if you're going to get that at $25/mo, NBA league pass, and other services, you are probably better off getting cable. But if only using a few select services:

Netflix $8.99/mo
NBA LP Broadband $15/mo (I think Ballstreams comes out to like $6 a month for the season) if you go that route)
Hulu Plus $7.99
Amazon Prime Instant Video* $8.25/mo

Total: $40.25 per month

*I purchased Prime originally for the shipping benefits and it pretty much replicates what is offered on Netflix, so you could easily choose one or the other instead of both.

Show me a cable offer with NBA League Pass or MLB season pass for $40 a month and I'll show you a hell of a deal. I know you can get cable bundles at a fairly cheap rate (though Uverse offered me a cable and internet bundle at $120 recently), but I get tired of haggling with them once the discount period ends and I end up paying a LOT more for a couple of months if I don't remember to call and get another discount. For the amount of TV I watch it's not worth it.

By that logic, shouldn't GE, RCA, and every other TV antenna manufacturer be included in this? Aereo was doing the same thing, just in a more sophisticated way. If Aereo charged a one time flat rate instead of a subscription fee, it would be almost identical.

 

DieHard Rocket, you forgot to include the price of your internet bro.

 

Abolish the supreme court

 

Where do you guys live that OTA antennas don't work?

 

How is Aereo any different than Limited Basic Cable from Comcast and other providers?

In essence, the providers are doing the same thing as Aereo when it comes to local channels. If the major providers can't provide OTA channels without carriage deals then why should Aereo be able to?

 

No. An antenna manufacturer is not selling you content, they are selling you equipment.

The court has also taken up cases on whether or not cable companies can scramble their signals over the air and what not.

 

Didn't include that because I don't consider internet a substitution for cable. I'm going to have internet regardless of whether or not I have cable (and IIRC, in the case of Uverse, you cannot have TV without their internet). You could perhaps factor in $5 or $10 a month for an increased speed to stream all of that TV.

And that list wasn't what I pay, just using it for comparison. I'm paying about $23 a month because I don't do League Pass and not using Netflix at the moment.

There is a lot of gray area here since Aereo provides an alternative vehicle to view the content, but I am essentially leasing or renting their antennas and viewing via their website instead of buying my own antenna and viewing through a TV set.

 

I use a coax with a coat hanger and connector I got from radio shack, and get crystal clear HD for over the air channels. Lots of instructions online for how to make one. But you don't get the recording capability and all that.

Or you can buy a cheap "rabbit ear" antenna that does the same thing.

 

Which is perfectly legal because you are accessing content that is broadcast over the air. What would not be legal is for you to sell that content that you are accessing to someone else without consent.

I feel like this is pretty straight forward and reasonable.

 

Not necessarily. Yes, technically it does seem that way since they're streaming OTA channels via the internet. However, there aren't going to be free colocations, free server racks, free bandwidth. Aereo has to charge to compensate for their monthly usage fee.

These are free channels that any antenna can pick up, provided that you are within range. I don't see why the major broadcasters are butt-hurt that some company is taking something out there that is free, and then re-selling it due to a specific reason (Internet streaming). Are the content providers making money from the OTA users? No. Are there more OTA users than Aereo users? Hell yeah

If the major content providers are so against it, why not sell it themselves? I wouldn't mind paying NBC, ABC, CBS, or FOX a small $1 a month charge to get their content via the internet.

 

Again, they are setting up a business that sells content from someone else without their consent.

That's right. Free to pick up on an antenna. If someone charges you a fee to access the content without the consent of the distributors they are breaking the law.

You are thinking small scale. If it was legal for Aereo to sell content without paying ABC, NBC, etc. why would Comcast pay for the rights to distribute content? The law applies across the board. The distributors have the right to control who sells access access to their content. Someone selling content without their consent is violating the law.

They do sell it. To cable companies. Just like radio stations don't sell you the ability to listen to over the air radio transmissions, tv can't sell you the right to pick up their over the air broadcasts. What they can control is your right to profit by selling it to someone else. Enter cable companies.

As to why they won't just come out with their own box for $1 or something, it's because that would undermine the entire relationship between the distributors and the cable companies and the loss of the cable companies would severely damage the revenue streams of the distributors. Your measly dollar is a pittance.

 

They want everyone to get cable because they are in bed with the cable companies and receiving nice cuts. If they start selling it on their own, cable companies may cut them off. But people like me and you don't want to pay subscriber fees for 200 other channels when we just want the major network channels. And that is what is wrong with this whole situation.

 

So get an over the air antenna and be happy with just the major channels. You can do that and it is perfectly legal.

What you want is a system where each person picks their own channels and pays only a small fee for each channel. That is untenable financially. The subscriber numbers would fall so hard that to make it work financially they'd be charging you high rates for each channel. It's the only way they'd survive. Tons of content would fall to the wayside.

Everyone wants to only pay for what they want and get it at a cheap rate without any dropoff in options or quality. You can't have it all.

But all that aside, regardless of whether you want everything a la carte or not, you (or Aereo) don't have the right to sell someone's content without their permission.

 

So does Simple.tv get affected by this?

 

Edit: I don't understand simple.tv so I shouldn't comment.