Watch live TV online. Save shows for later. No cable required,” says the announcement from Aereo, a start-up launched by Indian-American tech entrepreneur Chet Kanojia. And American television giants —ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox — are up in arms, knocking on the doors of the US Supreme Court to cry a halt to his grand scheme of what they regard as plain stealing of their content and streaming it online for a low subscription fee.
Backed by media mogul Barry Diller, Kanojia’s company developed a tiny antenna that grabs over-the-air television signals and streams them to subscribers on the Internet for a mere $8 a month. The 43-year-old Kanojia touts the device as a “cloud-based innovation” that is consumer-friendly and he expects the US Supreme Court to rule in his favour, telling The New York Times: “I can’t imagine they won’t be on the side of innovation.”
Having already set up shot in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Salt lake City, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, Denver and Baltimore metropolitan areas, Aereo is expanding to Greater Cincinnati on Tuesday that would cover a 24-county area across the States of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana with more than two million consumers.
“Aereo’s cloud-based antenna/DVR technology brings the old-fashioned antenna into the 21st Century, providing consumers access to the over-the-air broadcast signals that belong to them,” says the company.
“Now, your TV antenna is unbelievably small. So small it can fit on the tip of your finger. But it still gets awesome HD reception,” says Avero on its website. “Your antenna is in the cloud. With lots of other antennas, all connected to DVRs and super-fast Internet connections. Simply launch Aereo on anycompatible device and watch from anywhere in your home-coverage area.”
But the American Broadcasting Companies are not amused, saying what Aereo does is infringement on their copyright since it is redistributing their programmes without permission. Having banded together to deal with the challenge posed by the 43-year-old immigrant from India, the companies believe the Supreme Court’s pronouncement in the case would have great implications for the future of online TV services. The case is set to be heard in April.
Kanojia, the engineer who spent his early years in Bhopal, earned a Master’s in computer systems engineering from Northeastern University. Aereo is his second venture. The first was Navic Systems, which made software to help cable companies to interact with their customers. Kanojia sold Navic to Microsoft in 2008 for $250 million.
Previewing the legal battle with the TV giants, he told the NYT: “This is the first battleground for the next 50 years of how copyright is going to extend or apply to the Internet and the cloud.”