Aereo Wins Preliminary Injunction Hearing 65
bs0d3 writes "Aereo, a company that offers live broadcast TV via the internet to New York City residents, has won a preliminary injunction hearing. A federal judge has rejected a bid by major U.S. broadcasters to stop Aereo from rebroadcasting some of their programming over the Internet. District Judge Alison Nathan said that while the broadcasters have shown that they faced irreparable financial damage if the venture were allowed to continue, Aereo also showed it would face severe harm if the requested preliminary injunction were granted. The full injunction denial ruling can be found here."
Re:Overcoming stupidity via technicality (Score:5, Informative)
As a side note, why don't more gadget manufacturers include tiny antennae in their products specifically for tuning in OTA TV?
in china, the broadcast transmission signal strengths are so high that you can pick up a good signal with a bit of wet string (literally, not figuratively).
however in the west the signal strengths are much much lower, and whilst attempts have been made to create digital receivers that are sensitive enough, they are either far too power-hungry or far too expensive. each of these things is incompatible with portable hand-held mass-volume devices.
so this is why internet-based video transmission is so important. the signal can be sent across pre-established [semi-reliable] connections where the data rate can be tailored to the conditions. what i'm hoping is that this company will actually develop multi-level video CODECs and publish them as free software algorithms. it could happen.