Aereo WMC Plugin - NYC Metro Area and Expanding Soon!

[BabyfaceNJ]

Hello,
Aereo is available in my area.
I am wondering, does anybody knows of a WMC plugin for Aereo or if one is being developed for Aereo?

http://blog.aereo.com/2013/01/1716/
http://blog.aereo.com/2013/04/aereo-prevails-part-ii/

[richard1980]

I don't see what benefit an Aereo add-in would offer. Can you explain what you hope to achieve?

[adam1991]

Internet-delivered OTA TV, no antenna or tuner required.

Imagine that--broadband only, getting TV content via IP instead of archaic broadcast or cable systems.

Sure, there's a subscription--paid to the guy who collects the content and passes it along. So what?

Just like the music industry when MP3s first became big, the content owners and the airwaves lessees are going batcrap crazy over this concept. I love watching Aereo use their own arguments against them.

[RyC]

I think he meant what benefit would watching aereo in WMC be

[adam1991]

If you're using WMC, it's a nice central location to do all of that work.

It's like Netflix; sure, I could back out to a browser and use a kb/mouse to watch Netflix, but on my living room TV it's *much* nicer to do it via the plugin and the 10 foot interface.

Not everyone is sitting by himself at a laptop.

[BabyfaceNJ]

@ richard1980 - I like the WMC layout. I don't want to minimize my window, take out my keyboard and connect to the Aereo website to watch live TV. A WMC plugin would make Aereo work in WMC the same way "Live TV" works with my ceton card. It's pretty much exactly as adam1991 said. Its a central location that I would be able to control in WMC with just my remote. Since I only need my local broadcast channels ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN & CW and with the addition of HULU, I would be able to finally cut my TV bills 80% as I would only pay the cable company for internet. My job pays the internet portion of my bill anyway. My monthly bill would only be for Aereo & Hulu.

[richard1980]

Its a central location that I would be able to control in WMC with just my remote. Since I only need my local broadcast channels ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN & CW and with the addition of HULU, I would be able to finally cut my TV bills 80% as I would only pay the cable company for internet. My job pays the internet portion of my bill anyway. My monthly bill would only be for Aereo & Hulu.

I don't see how Aereo is necessary. Just swap the InfiniTV for one or more ATSC tuners.

[adam1991]

Its a central location that I would be able to control in WMC with just my remote. Since I only need my local broadcast channels ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN & CW and with the addition of HULU, I would be able to finally cut my TV bills 80% as I would only pay the cable company for internet. My job pays the internet portion of my bill anyway. My monthly bill would only be for Aereo & Hulu.

I don't see how Aereo is necessary. Just swap the InfiniTV for one or more ATSC tuners.

With Aereo, now you can do it all with tiny PCs and no extenders.

Aereo plus WMC is superior to ATSC tuners, if in fact Aereo works as advertised. All I need to maintain are small silent low power PCs (or a Roku? Echo?) and a broadband connection? Nice.

Even better when Aereo gets their dvr service going...

Alas, for those like me who like their Mythbusters (or Hoarders, or Real Trainwrecks of Hazzard County), it's cablecard time, no Aereo.

[richard1980]

+1 for Mythbusters, but I still fail to see how Aereo delivers anything that WMC can't. Sure, it may take some extra stuff to enable internet streaming, but at the end of the day WMC can deliver everything that Aereo delivers without the extra cost or limitations.

[adam1991]

+1 for Mythbusters, but I still fail to see how Aereo delivers anything that WMC can't. Sure, it may take some extra stuff to enable internet streaming, but at the end of the day WMC can deliver everything that Aereo delivers without the extra cost or limitations.

...except the ability to take it with you wherever you go, plus not having to set up and maintain a proper antenna.

Seriously, we've all talked about how the current method of delivering content is antiquated and hobbled by notions--held by the content and airwaves owners--that the world should still be like it was in 1970. Delivering said content via IP is common sense, yet those content owners are scared to death of anything that isn't a broadcast tower or a cable company.

So here comes Aereo, delivering common sense.

And BTW, I can imagine that if I were in NYC, getting any kind of usable signal that delivers ATSC reliably would be a struggle. Aereo would solve that problem for me.

If all I wanted was OTA TV and if I had to struggle with getting that because I live in an urban apartment among high rise buildings, I'd love to have some competition to the local cable company--competition that doesn't involve me trying (and ultimately failing) to use my own antenna setup.

And of course, THAT'S why the cable companies are so against this--it's yet another competitor to their established business that they think they should completely own themselves.

[NWW]

Only problem with TV via IP, is the non availability of sufficient broadband. Our local IPTV provider, for example, allocates 7 mbps per HD channel. Honestly, that is not enough, perhaps enough for soap opera, but not for sports. And even then, that same providers gives you 30 mbps down internet (best case scenario). So, you can only record two streams at once (that's what they allow).

Until faster internet is available (at least 100 mbps), it won't really work for people who would like quality. SES-Astra just showed an 4K channel using HEVC @20mbps. That can't be streamed over the internet unfortunately.

[adam1991]

AT&T's uVerse is IPTV, yes--and because their last-mile delivery is using the same two copper wires that Andy and Barney used to talk to Sarah, naturally their bandwidth is limited.

But modern coax systems have incredibly higher bandwidth available to them. If they weren't so busy shoving all 500 channels down the pipe old-style, they'd have plenty of room to deliver 10 HD channels via IP to my house.

Some cablecos are trying to maximize the bandwidth they have by using switched digital video; basically, it's streaming content masked to look like traditional delivery. No need to deliver all 500 channels simultaneously. And it's just a small conceptual step to go from SDV to IPTV.

My cable system can deliver 50Mb/s broadband plus all 500 simultaneous channels down their pipes. IPTV would be a cinch. Just quit pretending it's 1970, and get the damn cable box out of the way and let me stream what I want to my modern, computerized devices (and we all know that a TV is nothing more than a computer with a large display panel attached). If a straightforward login is good enough for my bank and for Netflix, it should be good enough for the cableco.

[barnabas1969]

I mostly agree with Adam. My cableco even puts the last three-four weeks of every primetime network show on their VOD service (if you use their cable box). The VOD stuff is compressed more, but it still looks pretty good. Imagine how much bandwidth that takes, and they can deliver it without any problem.

[barnabas1969]

Except this part...

And BTW, I can imagine that if I were in NYC, getting any kind of usable signal that delivers ATSC reliably would be a struggle. Aereo would solve that problem for me.

If all I wanted was OTA TV and if I had to struggle with getting that because I live in an urban apartment among high rise buildings, I'd love to have some competition to the local cable company--competition that doesn't involve me trying (and ultimately failing) to use my own antenna setup.

Just out of curiosity, I picked a high-rise apartment building in downtown New York City. Then, I went to tvfool.com and told it that I lived there on the 10th floor (100 feet above ground level). It says that I can get 30 channels with a pair of rabbit ears. Here's a link to the report:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapp ... c8b33c9313

[richard1980]

That was my point earlier in the thread. The channels are already available for free, so if you are in the reception area, Aereo is pointless. The only benefit I can see to it is it allows you to temporarily travel outside of the reception area but still receive the channels.

[staknhalo]

That was my point earlier in the thread. The channels are already available for free, so if you are in the reception area, Aereo is pointless. The only benefit I can see to it is it allows you to temporarily travel outside of the reception area but still receive the channels.

It's also meant for the non tech savvy.

[richard1980]

The OP was tech-savvy enough to setup an InfiniTV, so I'm pretty sure he's tech-savvy enough to setup an ATSC tuner.

[barnabas1969]

The only benefit I can see to it is it allows you to temporarily travel outside of the reception area but still receive the channels.

From what I read, it is not available outside of NYC. They check your IP address and block you if you're not in NYC.

[richard1980]

I thought that was only for sign-up....meaning once you are signed up, you go on the road and still have access. If you can't have access on the road, that makes the case for Aereo much worse.

[barnabas1969]

The way I read it, they block it outside the broadcast area. This way, their claim that each user has their own antenna holds water, and the broadcasters can't claim that they are doing something that a consumer couldn't do with their own antenna. It looks like a really dumb idea to me, except that it gives consumers a DVR for broadcast TV. Many people don't know that it's possible to buy/build a DVR for OTA TV.

To be honest, I thought it was only possible with a TiVo (which has a monthly subscription fee) until just a couple of years ago. I used to have an RCA TV that had Firewire outputs. They were designed to be used with an RCA DVR that allowed you to record stuff using the TV's tuner (and FFWD/RWD too). They wanted too damn much money for the RCA DVR, and it would only work with that particular TV.

Back in the days when Windows XP Media Center Edition came out, it wasn't obvious that it could be used as a DVR. I couldn't figure out why anyone would buy it, and nobody that I knew could tell me what it did beyond what XP did.

If all of Aereo's customers knew that they could install an ATSC tuner in a Win7/Win8 PC, and then use Remote Potato to view the content on their tablets and smartphones, Aereo would be out of business.