[opendtv] Re: More on Aereo
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 00:40:45 +0000
Mark Schubin posted:
> Here's a piece by Pete Putman:
> http://www.hdtvexpert.com/deconstructing-aereo/
I'm certainly in agreement about the gimmick aspect, as Pete describes well.
These paragraphs are more ambiguous, however, IMO:
"In contrast, a community antenna TV system (CATV, or cable TV) uses large
antennas to capture broadcast signals and subsequently demodulates then to
baseband video or MPEG, then re-broadcasts them on the same or different
channels with a new program guide. In today's digital world, your cable TV
provider has encrypted these local channels, meaning you must lease or buy a
compatible set-top box to watch them.
"That is indeed a retransmission and a 'public performance' in the eyes of
copyright law. The CATV company charges for its service and sometimes inserts
local ads on those channels. So they provide not only a remote antenna system,
they also add in a DVR service, their own program guide, and encryption."
Does Aereo insert its own ads? On the DVR aspect, it seems that courts have
agreed on that already. Whether the DVR is in your home or in "the MVPD cloud,"
these devices are considered fair use. So those arguments should not count
against Aereo, IMO. Or at worst, the Supreme Court could insist that the Aereo
DVRs be located in customer premises instead. Problem solved.
Charging for service is also not necessarily material here either. One can rent
a drop from an antenna system, e.g. as an apartment dweller, certainly without
that renting constituting a public performance. It's just a coax feed from a
community antenna that an individual household may not have financed outright.
The signal is going to individual households, very much like separate antennas
for each household would do.
Even the TV guide should not be an issue, in this age where the local
broadcasters transmit PSIP. Or perhaps the Supreme Court could rule that Aereo
provide ONLY the information available over PSIP.
MVPD systems are a different matter. They create their own DIFFERENT TV
environment, with lots more choice than what exists OTA and with subscription
fees for the extra channels. But Aereo does not do this, nor does Aereo bypass
local broadcasters in favor of other sources for that TV network. So aside from
detailed technical aspects of the transcoding going on, unless Aereo is adding
or otherwise changing the signal choice from what is available OTA, I don't see
why they should be compared with an MVPD.
Continuing from Putman's piece,
"For Aereo to have a 100% true-blue, subscriber-controlled 'antenna system,'
they would need individual antennas, receiver/decoders, and encoders for every
subscriber. That would amount to thousands of discrete pieces of hardware and
an enormous capital outlay they'd never hope to recover at $8 per month. Their
patent describes a way to assign each antenna to a separate tuner to demodulate
the video stream to MPEG2. That might work fine for a handful of viewers. But
what if 10,000, 20,000, or 100,000 subscribers are watching at once?"
That's an argument against the technical merits of the gimmick, but it's not an
argument against Aereo providing what should be viewed as a community antenna
distribution network.
Bert
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