Aereo Is The Most Important Service That Nobody Should Use en-us Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500 Fri, 26 Dec 2014 14:02:20 -0500 Steve Kovach JimD Tue, 29 Apr 2014 16:08:22 -0400 Rabbit ears only let you watch live TV with no DVR capability, which would be complicated for most users. It also doesn't let you watch TV from your tablet with a free app. Not to mention, you're not guaranteed to receive all channels via an antenna. I guess anyone can write a blog. Michael Nogrady Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:12:18 -0400 The difficulty for most folks is since the Broadcasts are now digital they are much more easily interfered with. I myself can't get half of the signals I used to get when they were analog. Digital is an all or nothing thing. So AEREO provides very useful service for people in my situation. Rekrul Mon, 28 Apr 2014 18:49:02 -0400 Will an indoor antenna work for people living on the lower floors of an apartment building in the middle of a city? For condo owners who are forbidden from putting anything on the outside of the home that they supposedly "own"? How about for people who live out in the boondocks with hills between them and the transmitters? ateam Mon, 28 Apr 2014 11:04:40 -0400 your article makes sense if you can receive the ota signal even with the new spire up on wtc people within 10 miles of it get spotty coverage so companies like aereo is the only way to get all broadcast channels. David Hoffman Mon, 28 Apr 2014 09:23:00 -0400 Your HOA may be in violation of the FCC's OTARD(Over The Air Reception Device) rules. <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> Basically, antennas that are 1 meter or less in diameter or largest horizontal dimension must be allowed to be safely installed. The top of the antenna installation can be up to 12 feet above the top of the roof line of the house. For antennas used for OTA "free" television you should be allowed to install any size of antenna, at or below the 12ft above roof line limit. Denny's TV Antennas has some interesting models designed to limit the size of the antenna, while still providing VHF and UHF reception. <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> There is a test page that shows how various antennas compare in reception capability. <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> If you do not need VHF reception you have a lot of great choices from several manufacturers. Concord Smith Mon, 28 Apr 2014 08:08:24 -0400 You forget to mention, two other facts. First, Aereo provides a DVR service and second, there are many people that can't get all of the local stations with an antenna. On the first point, you can either create or buy an OTA DVR, but that is going to cost money to purchase and second, like Tivo, pay a fee for the guide (14.95/mnth). On the second point, this may be caused by multi-path issues and/or distance (why they picked ATSC over others?), even with an outdoor ($45-1xx.00 one). Jimminey Mon, 28 Apr 2014 00:05:18 -0400 Aereo really should be seen as a competitor of with Hulu, since it basically functions as a more complete version of Hulu (whose only real major attraction is broadcast tv content stored much longer than you can get it on the broadcast web pages). That's why the networks, particularly abc, nbc and fox, Hulu owners, see it as such a threat. KellyS Sun, 27 Apr 2014 21:55:58 -0400 I live in a very prosperous suburban city north of Los Angeles and there is NO reception of any off air broadcasts. All great points and I would add that the equipment needed to do what Aereo does for you stacks up the cost for the same functionality. You need to buy a Tivo with subscription($150-300) for your DVR and then a Slingbox ($180-250) to stream the content over the Internet to your phone/tablet/computer. Most people also don't have the time or expertise to set all that gear up. Aereo deserves the chance to change the way next generation views content. kellydorsey8 Sun, 27 Apr 2014 17:03:12 -0400 "There's no need to pay $8 per month[to Aereo] for something that's already free." Hopefully then, those Supreme relics attempting to learn their email use will then forever leave Aereo and consumers alone. Alex Wilkas Sun, 27 Apr 2014 16:44:21 -0400 Rabbit ears don't work and my HOA does not allow external TV antennas, to get SF stations I need to be on Comcast nope! Sun, 27 Apr 2014 16:24:17 -0400 Thats only for the most recent episode. You can watch the one from two weeks ago without logging in. all movies and tv shows can be downloaded FREE Sun, 27 Apr 2014 16:20:03 -0400 <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> all free smartone1 Sun, 27 Apr 2014 15:07:18 -0400 You can only watch Mad Men on AMC website if you are cable tv subscriber Gary Overton Sun, 27 Apr 2014 14:38:05 -0400 It would be very useful for me. I am 70 miles from the TV antennas and live in a valley so rabbit ears don't work for me Give It Up Sun, 27 Apr 2014 14:35:00 -0400 Obviously you are not an attractive demographic, otherwise someone would have gone through the hassle and expense of threading a fiber optic cable near you. I suggest you rent TV shows on VHS tapes from your local library. (That is, if your town has a library.) oops oops! Sun, 27 Apr 2014 13:51:29 -0400 AMC is a cable channel, and Aereo just picks up OTA broadcast networks, so no go on using Aereo to watch Mad Men. But you are right that he is throwing money away by buying it on itunes since it is free to watch on the AMC website. Good call there. oops! Sun, 27 Apr 2014 13:46:55 -0400 You are throwing money away by ordering Mad Men on iTunes at $2.99/ episode. You can watch it for free on AMC's website. But, more importantly (and ironically) at 4 episodes per month, thats about $12/ month you spend just to get Mad men when you could just DVR it using Aereo for $8...which means you would save $4/ month if you used Aereo. Oops! Mr Thrifty Sun, 27 Apr 2014 13:33:58 -0400 >you can just do what I did and buy an antenna for around 20 bucks. Paying for Aereo is like paying for tap water at a restaurant. Just because YOU live in a place with good HDTV reception, doesn't mean MOST people do. For technical reasons, It's harder to get ATSC HDTV than the old analog NTSC signal. For one thing, a poor analog signal might have some snow, but it is still tolerable to watch. ATSC signal reception is binary. It's either on or off. You are watching, and your program cuts in and out as a function of all kinds of propagation issues. That is not tolerable as you are watching a program. HDTV is not very tolerant of multipath. This would be seen as "ghosting" on an analog signal, but for digital signals, its just confuses the decoder and it gives up. If you live in an area with hills and mountains, you automatically have multipath. You can get temporary multipath from an airplane flying over. (In the middle of your show, of course.) Multipath can also occur in the city with all the tall buildings reflecting signals around. Moreover, since they moved most HDTV stations to the UHF band, you can have different signal attenuation depending on the amount of foliage on the trees nearby. UHF antennas for fringe areas tend to have higher gain and a narrower beamwidth. This means that if all your stations are not on the same tower, you can't have the antenna pointed at all stations at the same time. Not only does gain suffer for the stations not on the "beam", but multipath gets worse. You could get a rotor, but who wants to adjust an antenna rotor every time you change channels? Yes, under ideal conditions, you can get good HDTV with a modest antenns. In northern and north-central NJ, for example, this is often not the case. You might only get 2 or 3 stations really well. I would much prefer Aereo. Jimminey Sun, 27 Apr 2014 13:19:20 -0400 The writer of this piece is completely overlooking two things: Aereo doesn't just rebroadcast, also allows you to store content for later viewing; and Aereo solves the problem of poor digital tv reception. If you live on top of a hill within 10 miles of broadcast antennas and with no trees around, your digital reception will be fine, unless it's storming. Otherwise, broadcast reception is spotty and poor. I live in the middle of a city, five miles from the antennas, but I have to constantly reposition my indoor antenna. When the FCC switched over to digital, it deliberately chose a digital transmission protocol that favors distance coverage over quality of broadcast transmission. That's why our digital tv works so poorly compared to tv in Europe and Asia, which use different broadcast protocols. And that's why Aereo is so popular in the areas it operates. I'm pessimistic that Aereo will win its court battle--it's pretty clear that the justices view its "individual antenna technology" as a clever but obvious attempt to get around copyright law. But the whole problem that Aereo seeks to address is the result of very bad public policy decisions made by the FCC, and a Supreme Court decision either way won't solve that problem.