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Jewish World Review July 27, 2012 / 8 Menachem-Av, 5772 How to watch live TV on your iPhone By Mark Kellner
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It was Sunday evening, during a late dinner, when I realized the value of a new service, not yet generally available outside of New York City, called Aereo.
My wife and I were dining - let's just say my entrée was "crunchified" - and there was some anxiety on the part of my beloved over a certain reality TV show's outcome. Yes, we were recording the show on our TiVo device, but there was still an interest in what was happening right then.
Out pops my iPhone, and with a quick hop to www.aereo.com, whose owners allowed a Washington Times contributor access for testing purposes. There, in stunningly clear video, was the reality show - in which a young woman named Emily encounters her future. A good time was had by all.
If you're a New Yorker, the Aereo service is available right now: three months free and then you pay $12 a month to access a whole range of over-the-air television channels, including programs you can "record" in your account and play later. Earlier this month, a Federal district court judge in New York City allowed Aereo, which is backed in part by billionaire Barry Diller, to continue to operate while lawsuits filed against it by the ABC television network and public television station WNET proceed.
Aereo works by capturing those over-the-air signals with a tiny high-definition antenna, and then streams the programs to users. It's similar to what cable television operators do, except that, right now, Aereo doesn't pay "retransmission fees" to the broadcasters, which the cable companies do, and therefore irked the broadcasters.
That's for the lawyers to contemplate, and perhaps for a judge or several to resolve. For this review, I'll stick to the service at hand, and what it may portend for us.
These are early days for Aereo, although Mr. Diller told the Bloomberg news service that the firm plans to expand into other markets over the coming year. So while it's not yet generally available in Washington, D.C. and environs, it soon may be offered here.
As mentioned, the service concentrates on over-the-air channels, and that's not just the four major broadcast networks and public television. In the New York market, one can watch a government channel, several Spanish-language channels, two Home Shopping Network channels, and several other "independent" stations, including one which features "Dear My Sister Bok Hee Noona," a Korean "television novel," with English subtitles, that is a tad entrancing. ("Young woman works in a brewery and studies hard," is the Aereo guide listing, although the "brewery" seems to be more of a family winemaking business. I digress.)
Whatever one's taste in programming - "telenovelas" as they're called in Spanish, or game shows or Dr. Oz - if it's on the air, you're likely to find it on Aereo. This could be quite something for area commuters: watching a favorite show or local news during your daily commute on Metro, or sneaking a peek at another NFL game while watching the Washington Redskins this fall at FedEx Field. The London 2012 Olympic Games, as they are officially known, open Friday evening (local time) in the United Kingdom's capital city, and this would be a great way to follow many of those events. (At lunchtime, of course, not while working!)
Missing of course, are the cable channels many of us enjoy. I have no way of knowing whether any of those will make it to the Aereo service anytime soon, however nice it would be to have "my MTV" available, too.
But this is the opening of a new way of television distribution. How it unfolds will be interesting to observe.
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here. © 2012, News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit the paper at http://www.washingtontimes.com |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
