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Aereo opens its streaming TV to Mac and Windows web browsers
If you'd wanted to watch Aereo's unique antenna-to-internet TV streaming until today, you had to tune in from an iOS device or Roku box. That's not a lot of choice for placeshifting, is it? A fresh update to the company's streaming service has widened the choices considerably for New Yorkers to include all the major browsers on Macs and Windows PCs. As long as you're using a recent version of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari, you can catch up on Ion or Telemundo while you're checking email. About the only restrictions left are the continued lack of Android support and occasional lawsuits from traditionalist broadcasters.
Aereo doubles DVR space to 80 hours for early adopters
Were you so entranced by Aereo's approach to over-the-air TV broadcasting that you signed up even while the legal battles were just getting started? You're likely being rewarded for your trust. The company has confirmed with GigaOM that New Yorkers who subscribed in the "earliest days" will have their cloud DVR storage doubled to 80 hours -- no limited period, no extra charge. There should likewise be some improved tools for overseeing all that extra space in the near future, although just what that might entail is left to the imagination. We won't fret about it much: given the service's still-tentative existence, any upgrades are icing on the cake for customers.
Aereo avoids a preliminary injunction, keeps its antenna to internet TV service on the air for now
While the battle between Aereo, a service that brings OTA TV broadcasts to the internet, and the broadcasters that began suing it before it even launched continues, a judge ruled today against a request for a preliminary injunction to shut it down. Reuters reports that the basis for the decision is that while the broadcasters demonstrated they faced "irreparable harm", Aereo too faced harm from a potential shutdown, and the balance did not tip heavily enough in the broadcasters favor. So, for now the subscription feeds from those microantennas to NYC residents shelling out $12 a month will continue -- we'll wait see if the upstart streamer's streak continues.
NYC gets live iPad IPTV of broadcast channels with Aereo
Want to watch TV on your iPad? It's natural, healthy and it sure does seem like everyone is doing it. There are hearty hardware-supported options from companies like Elgato, and most pay TV subscription services (Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV, RCN, Dish Network etc.) have figured out a way to move some of the programming you're paying for from the big screen to the small. Waiting a day or so, of course, means that prime-time programming on Hulu Plus and Netflix has you mostly covered; but that loses you local news, sports and talk. Even single channels, brands or sports leagues (ESPN, NBA Courtside, MLB At Bat) are getting into the action -- but getting live access means hefty subscription fees, being an existing cable/satellite customer, or both. If you're not interested in the supra-broadcast offerings that cable or satellite can deliver -- or if you just can't stomach the idea of paying $60, $75 or more per month to watch television -- there is this ancient and hoary concept called "over the air." Yes, Americans are still benefiting from their divinely granted inalienable rights to free TV, but they need antennas and reasonable signal strength, not to mention TVs. Elgato's HDHomeRun product works well to take your TV programming to your Mac or PC, but it's a $179.95 cost and you can't really carry it around with you. That's why Aereo's offering -- $12 a month for broadcast TV to your iPhone, iPad, Roku box or browser, as long as you live in New York City -- is so intriguing. Aereo has chosen to deliver over-the-air television programming straight to the browser, rather than through a native iOS app, and the result is remarkably smooth and easy to use. By combining your device with a remote antenna/DVR combo, and allowing easy AirPlay/Apple TV streaming or Roku integration for big-screen viewing, the service seems to have found a way to deliver a premium live and recorded programming experience without the steep price. %Gallery-152317% The geofencing limitation on Aereo's market is a consequence both of the technology that Aereo has invented and the television industry's regulatory ecosystem. Aereo is working around the legal minefields of "rebroadcasting" to customers by making every subscriber the renter of a tiny bit of New York real estate -- a pair of teensy HD antennas, each the size of a dime, rack upon rack of them in the company's datacenter. Through the subscriber website, you can browse and search the live TV program guide, assign episodes for recording on a 40 GB DVR, share viewing choices with Twitter or Facebook contacts -- it's all there, and all pretty easy. The proof of any streaming service, however, is in the video quality. Aereo allows users to force a low, medium or high quality setting, plus an automatic setting that adjusts to available bandwidth. In my testing of Aereo's service, I made a point of sticking to high-speed WiFi on my iPad 2 to give the video quality the best chance to show off -- and show off it did. The video clip above gives you a taste, but keep in mind that you can quickly take the video full-screen (I didn't show that in the demo, as Reflection doesn't handle full-screen video correctly). The full-screen streaming looks fantastic; it's largely indistinguishable from broadcast at its best, and even when it chunks up a bit it's still very watchable. Aereo is offering 90 days of free trial service to New Yorkers on a rolling invitation basis as it spins up into full operation. There are still a few rough edges to fix; if you're timeshifting a program by a few minutes, for instance, it has a habit of cutting off when you reach the scheduled stop time (rather than just rolling forward as it would on a conventional DVR). Building the service on a pure HTML/mobile web platform, however, gives the company space to iterate rapidly and fix bugs faster than Apple's review process would allow. Support for more browsers and more devices is also in the immediate plans. If I was in a cord-cutting mood -- but I still wanted to keep my DVR capability and supercharge my TV mobility -- I'd put Aereo at the top of my service list. It remains to be seen how well customers take to it and what kind of geographic range the service will eventually cover; if you don't live in NYC then (forgive me for this) you'll have to stay tuned.
FCC backs off talk of forcefully reclaiming spectrum from TV broadcasters
Rest easy, broadcasters: your hard-earned spectrum is safe, at least for the moment. The FCC's full-court press to round up additional spectrum for wireless broadband services had led it to suggest reclaiming some spectrum from broadcasters in recent months -- a move that would arguably make sense considering the ever-shrinking importance of over-the-air television and the availability of more efficient broadcast methods -- but was met with considerable resistance from the broadcast industry, ultimately leading it to back off the message this week. The Fed's director of scenario planning for its broadband task force has gone on record saying the commission had never seriously considered implementing such a plan, instead looking at "a scenario that establishes a voluntary marketplace mechanism so that broadcast TV stations have a choice in how they want to use their spectrum." In other words, sell it if you want, keep it if you want -- and in all likelihood, the FCC would be looking to repurpose any offloaded frequencies for broadband. Of course, this kind of plan could leave the country with a fragmented system of spectrum slots where individual stations have elected to sell part or all of their airwaves, not really an optimal solution when some estimates have us needing to clear several hundred additional megahertz to keep up with data demand over the next few years -- but it's a start.
Qualcomm FLO TV handheld in the works?
According to gdgt, Qualcomm -- which usually sticks to research, design, and the fabless chip game -- is fixin' to produce something called the Personal Television, for use with its FLO TV network. The handheld device is alleged to feature a capacitive touchscreen, a swipe and gesture-driven UI, 4GB of memory, built-in stereo speakers, and enough juice for five hours of video, fifteen hours of music, or three hundred stand-by hours. Currently, FLO TV is only available on a limited number of phones, from the likes of AT&T and Verizon in the States, although the company has said that they're planning on bringing it to other phones (via add-on peripherals) including the iPhone and WinMo devices. Can we offer one word of advice? You might want to go with a name besides "Personal Television." Really, it sounds so very 2006.
Qualcomm developing FLO TV accessories for iPhone OS 3.0, other smartphones
Qualcomm's fledgling FLO TV service might be on to something this time. President Bill Stone's announced plans to offer mobile broadcast to phones via add-on peripherals, including an iPhone 3.0-compatible antenna /chip accessory that's currently in the works, although without an estimated release window (Business Insider suggests it'll be ready sometime next year). The company's also looking into accessorizing Windows Mobile phones, either with a plug-in or some device that connects over Wi-Fi / Bluetooth. Seeing as the latest comScore statistics say less than one percent of all phone users watch mobile broadcast TV, which at the moment has to come built-in, this could prove to be a boon for the service -- assuming Q or the carriers can do something about those excessive pricing plans or fierce competition from Sling.[Via Electronista]
