Aereo, a service that streams over-the-air channels to its subscribers, has now spent more than a year serving residents of New York City. The service officially expands to Boston tomorrow and is coming to many more cities over the next few months, including Atlanta and Washington, DC. Aereo seems like a net-add for consumers, and the opposition has, so far, failed to mount a defense that sticks.

But the simple idea behind Aereo is so brilliant and precariously positioned that it seems like we need to simultaneously enjoy it as hard as we can and not at all. We have to appreciate it for exactly what it is, when it is, and expect nothing more. It seems so good that it cannot last. And tragically, there are more than a few reasons why it may not.

A little about how Aereo works: as a resident of the United States, you have access to a handful of TV channels broadcast over the air that you can watch for free with an antenna (or, two antennas, but we’ll get to that). A subscription to Aereo gets you, literally, your very own tiny antenna offsite in Aereo’s warehouse. The company streams this to you and attaches it to a DVR service, allowing you both live- and time-shifted viewing experiences.



Aereo service is cheap, but it’s not free—not illegal-streaming free or watching-TV-episodes-four-weeks-late-on-a-network’s-website free. Still, the cost is low enough and it has enough value added, mainly in the form of the DVR, that I’m more than willing to pay for it.

In my time with the service, I’ve had a couple of “buffering” messages crop up, but nothing egregious. The Web interface can sometimes be a little stuttery, particularly on mobile devices when navigating the programming guide. But once I’m settled into watching something, the stream is high quality.

Some standard remote functions are available (pause, skip back, record), and it's possible to start watching a show in progress from the beginning. Per Aereo, the service starts recording a program as soon as you start watching it, which allows this functionality. Pressing “record” while it’s in progress will save the recording.

Aereo provides a “feed” which recommends a handful of shows upcoming that day or night. Since there are only a handful of shows to choose from, recommendations tend to be fairly rote: a performance at Lincoln Center, a late-night talk show. You can also search the programming guide to find upcoming shows rather than browsing by the day or hour.

Subscribing to the plan with two antennas affords you the ability to record one show while watching another or record two shows at once. When a show is selected to record, Aereo asks you if you want to record just once, all episodes, or only new episodes. Aereo then presents a handful of settings you can tweak, including toggles for start- and stop-recording times.

You can set the show’s recording priority in a numbered list, though this is done in the context of all shows set to record with no regard for whether they ever conflict. If you have a lot going on your DVR, this list could be a little hard to wrangle.

If you do schedule a third, conflicting show, Aereo will ask which of the two previously scheduled recordings it should cancel, if any. You can cancel the recording or tell Aereo to “schedule it anyway.” If you do this, Aereo will plop an alert over your browsing experience. Presumably this is so you can schedule something in a hurry so you don’t forget and then resolve the conflict later when you have time to think about whether you’d rather miss The Voice or Extreme Weight Loss.



Unlike actual live TV, a channel won’t play indefinitely. The playback will stop when any show ends, and you’ll have to press play again on the stream or select another show to restart it. So if you’re a TV-as-background-noise kind of person, the experience will not be quite as seamless. And you do still get commercials. Sadly.

The service is on par in price with a Netflix subscription: $8 per month plus tax for one antenna and 20 hours of DVR storage or $12 per month for two antennas and 60 hours of storage.

“I’m not touching you… I’m not touching you…”

Aereo has been challenged in court over its delivery process, with broadcasters suing on the grounds that the service is “retransmission.” That would require Aereo to pay fees to the broadcasters (right now, Aereo pays them as much as you would for your own antenna, which is nothing). Another suit alleged Aereo streams count as “public performance” and infringe copyright, but that has already been put down. Aereo is embattled, but the service is proving a stronger case than broadcasters might have been expecting at the outset.

While the company is on the verge of expanding to many more markets, doubt has been cast on whether the model is sustainable—or more so, whether broadcasters will allow the parasitic relationship to continue. According to Politico, only 10 percent of TV viewers use antennas to access broadcast networks, while the rest access them via a cable package. If broadcasters were to pull up their stakes and go cable-only (which at least FOX and CBS have openly threatened to do), there would be little to lose on their end in terms of audience.

So to the point, the number of people using antenna broadcasts is shrinking. Even more to the point, as Politico states, the block of spectrum occupied by over-the-air broadcasts “would most likely be more valuable if converted to mobile broadband use.”

The FCC made it clear in September that it intends to convert some of the spectrum currently used by TV broadcasts in the 600MHz range to mobile-use in 2014. The auction will work by allowing broadcasters to submit 6MHz chunks of spectrum for bidding, which the FCC will turn around and repackage and sell to mobile operators.

With that opportunity close at hand, not much reason to hang around in the broadcast airspace, and freeloaders like Aereo closing in, it’s not hard to imagine some of the broadcasters declaring they’re out and going cable-only. While Aereo sounds like broadcasts' best motivation to keep going in terms of viewership growth, it gives the broadcasters no tangible reason to stay.



Aereo may be trying to ride out the legal attacks against it and put itself in control before extending an olive branch to broadcasters to incentivize their relationship (Aereo did not respond to requests for comment). Time Warner stated that it may start its own Aereo-like service if Aereo can successfully defend itself. Broadcasters may be able to suffer Aereo gladly, but not Aereo plus a copycat from every cable provider, including Comcast or the Dish Network. The time for Aereo to both evade broadcasters and win them over is starting to run out.

A mass broadcaster exodus just to spite Aereo seems unlikely. But a nascent service is predicating its success on an ability to cannibalize a crotchety, aging one with no tithes paid. This is obviously a risky move. For all the cable-cutting people and Aereo’s improbable survival, the situation seems too good to be true. It might yet turn out to be.