# Startup service sends live local TV to the iPhone



## Garyunc (Oct 8, 2006)

I thought this was an interesting story..
http://www.uticaod.com/latestnews/x1134099239/Startup-service-sends-live-local-TV-to-the-iPhone

Anyone invited to this service? How is the quality?

Any chance this survives the legal hurdles?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Garyunc said:


> Any chance this survives the legal hurdles?


None. If the individual antennas were what were being sold for a person to carry with them or place in their home, maybe. But as a service they will be shut down or forced to pay royalties just like cable and satellite.


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## shuye (Oct 20, 2008)

Just saw this today:

http://www.chron.com/news/texas/art...-service-expands-despite-lawsuits-4174793.php

"In the wake of a federal court ruling that tentatively endorsed its legality, Aereo will bring its $8-a-month service to Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and 18 other markets in the U.S., as well as to New York's suburbs."

Steve


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

James Long said:


> None.


Already did.

http://www.iptvconnection.com/index...n-court-battle/page__hl__aereo__fromsearch__1

Update:
http://www.iptvconnection.com/index...-new-york-city/page__hl__aereo__fromsearch__1


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It is a preliminary ruling ... it isn't over until SCOTUS rules (or allows a lower court ruling to stand). And then the company will go broke paying the past due carriage fees.

With the California court ruling AGAINST a similar service this is certainly one that needs to be dealt with on a national level. One cannot have different courts ruling differently on the same federal law. There has to be one answer nationwide.

Stay tuned.


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## fluffybear (Jun 19, 2004)

James Long said:


> With the California court ruling AGAINST a similar service this is certainly one that needs to be dealt with on a national level. One cannot have different courts ruling differently on the same federal law. There has to be one answer nationwide.
> 
> Stay tuned.


Wasn't that service though trying to offer Los Angeles channels on a nationwide basis?


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

James Long said:


> One cannot have different courts ruling differently on the same federal law. There has to be one answer nationwide.
> 
> Stay tuned.


That happens quite often, especially at the Circuit level. The 9th is somewhat notorious for oddball rulings that go against what other Circuits have ruled.

Even if it gets to the SCOTUS, it may not be final as laws can get changed confusing previous rulings.


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

I see now that they claim you don't really have your "own" antenna, just that only one person uses a particular antenna at a time.
So, I wonder....do you get your "own" receiver at their antenna site? If so, how do I use "my" receiver and "(currently) my" antenna, to do some TV DX'ing? I should be able to tune "my" receiver to any channel I want to look at, active or not.
I'd like to check out the low-powered stations,too. Not just the mains, or just the local ones. Might be some good tropo-ducting on some of those "vacant" channels.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

One thing in the service's favor is that they are NOT offering the signals outside of the market where they originate ... so it is a service that provides one's expected local stations. That helps them stay away from the issues of white areas, statutory fees and blackouts that satellite and cable providers must deal with.

I believe this service should be treated just like any other cable or satellite provider. Permission should be required for any in market retransmission (and if they ever expand to out of market transmission they should have to follow the distants rules).

Their claims in court should be audited ... and if they fail the people involved should be prosecuted for perjury. I am surprised the judge bought their "individual antennas" argument. Perhaps the judge was not technically savvy but I would want to see the operation including every antenna and the individual feed down to each tuner. And then see how those individual tuners connected to each DVR and stream encoder.

Either their service is really small or they have a lot of equipment sitting idle waiting for the peak hours. Or they are lying.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

James Long said:


> Their claims in court should be audited ... and if they fail the people involved should be prosecuted for perjury. I am surprised the judge bought their "individual antennas" argument. Perhaps the judge was not technically savvy but I would want to see the operation including every antenna and the individual feed down to each tuner. And then see how those individual tuners connected to each DVR and stream encoder.


Also prove that each tiny antenna can receive the entire DTV spectrum alone and that they are not working together as elements of a large shared antenna. The lowest channel they have listed is WABC which is on 7, the highest is WNYW which is on 44. If that tiny antenna can get all of them they would make way more money selling the antenna instead of all the money they are currently spending in courts defending themselves against the broadcasters.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The antenna description from the post that started this thread:
Aereo has created a dime-sized TV antenna, and crams hundreds and perhaps thousands of them into boxes the size of a dishwasher. The company places these boxes anywhere they can pick up local TV signals.

"Every one of these little antennas has a person's name on it," Kanojia says.

However, he clarified that each subscriber doesn't necessarily use the same antenna all the time. Subscribers do share antennas - they just don't use the same antenna at the same time.​Hundreds or perhaps thousands of dime sized antennas crammed into a dishwasher sized box sounds like an array. If they are combining the signals of those antennas before they get to the tuners then they have built a common antenna television system and really cannot say which antenna is being used by which user and cannot prevent an antenna from being shared by multiple users.

Each antenna needs a feed to a tuner separate from other antennas.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

I managed to do a little testing of it with the free trial. The urls are not unique at all and are just protected by an expiring token that is generated each time you choose a channel. When you use the site it gives you the illusion that you are locked into one thing at a time by keeping track of what you had on with another device like an iPod Touch or another PC and forcing it to stop before you can watch something on another device. However, I was able to launch multiple channels at the same time by directly accessing the urls in the cache file on my iPod Touch.

iOS uses HLS streaming, the web urls are using Adobe's http dynamic streaming. The live DVR replay function is just something that is built into Strobe Media Player and is common on other sites that use http dynamic streaming for their live streams like BBC and RTE. Basically since it's a progressive download you can backtrack to the point where you started watching the stream.

The free trial doesn't give you access to the recording feature so I didn't have a chance to test what they do for that.


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