Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Have You Seen These Boxes In Brooklyn?

Somewhere in the wilds of Brooklyn, maybe on the roof of a warehouse or along the waterfront, sits an array of hundreds of thousands of tiny TV antennas the size of a thumbnail. The antennas are organized onto boxes "the size of a dish washer." Each box can hold thousands of the little antennas.

The boxes and the thousands of tiny antennas belong to Aereo, a new Internet television service.

According to the New York Times, when Aereo becomes available in New York City in mid-March, the service will stream all of the programming of the major networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC) to phones, tablets and Internet-connected TVs.

According to Gigaom, New York-based Aereo believes that by giving each user their own tiny antenna (and a DVR in the cloud), it can bypass legal challenges that have brought down companies in the past which tried to repackage free, over-the-air network television.

Prospective Aereo customers must be New York City residents and may register at aereo.com. Beginning March 14, members can get a 30-day free trial and the membership fee is $12 per month (if it can survive the legal battles ahead).

Barry Diller, creator of the Fox television network, is on the company's board.

Photo courtesy of Gigacom


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those so-called antennas appear to be non-functional.

Legal beagles might wish to hire a subject matter expert to trace the wiring to see if they're actually connected and functional.

mcbrooklyn said...

No, they belong to Aereo, which just won its lawsuit. They're good to go.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/business/media/aereo-wins-in-appeals-court-setting-stage-for-trial-on-streaming-broadcast-tv.html