Cord Cutters Getting More Options With Aereo

The idea of cutting the cord from the providers of TV programming and the bundles they provide has been a topic for discussion for many years. And while there has been some slow process in that direction, the number of people who have actually cut the cord seems to be relatively small as compared to the number of subscribers. We know that subscriptions have remained relatively flat for the past few years for subscription TV and while we all would like to believe the number of cord cutters is rising significantly is not supported by the information. But that may all be changing based on some start ups working to provide what so many people really want, which is lower costs and better selection.

A recent court decision in the Federal Appeals court in New York this week could be further opening the door for getting TV programming for a fraction of what is paid today. The broadcasters were trying to stop a company called Aereo which has been providing TV in a unique way and at radically reduced costs. They started on the East Coast and are moving West, but for those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is going to be a while before we can test out this new service. But when it does arrive, it looks to be of value for many of us.

What they are doing is capturing the over the air broadcasts via very small antennas and storing that information. And they have thousands of these tiny antennas with each one being dedicated to a subscriber. Once you subscribe to their very cheap service, you can watch the shows live or save them for watching later just like the well known DVRs. The concept is very simple and the broadcasters do not like it because it takes away the huge revenue stream from their packaged programming deals they force you to take. This process does simplify things greatly and with a price of $80 once a year (annual plan), you are saving a lot of money with great benefit.

For your subscription, you are getting two antennas. One is used to receive the signal from the airways and the other is used for DVR recording on Aereo's cloud for later broadcasting to the device of your choosing. This model could be something for other providers of TV programming to provide to their customers such Dish or DirectTV to help hold down costs to their customers. The whole idea could potentially be copied by cable companies as well to reduce costs.

All of this is sent to you over the Internet making things very convenient to watch on your mobile devices or a large screen TV. This battle between the broadcasters and Aereo is far from over. There are far more legal battles to be waged, but if they can get a large audience of subscribers, it makes things much harder to stop. We can hope that things continue to be successful for Aereo as we gain another option to receive TV programming instead of paying large sums of money for what we do not watch.