Live TV on iPhones may remain a dream

New York: A start-up backed by media billionaire Barry Diller has launched a service that sends live local TV feeds to iPhones and iPads. But the service may be short-lived, since TV stations are likely to challenge its right to use their broadcasts.

The service, Aereo, launched in New York last week, but it is available only by invitation. It hopes to broaden access to more people next month, and then launch in other cities.

Subscribers pay $12 (Dh44) per month and use their web browsers to access streams from 27 local channels, including the major broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

For now, the service works only on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, but Aereo is planning to make it accessible to PC browsers and Android-powered phones as well.

In a test by an Associated Press reporter, the service provided high-quality streams over Wi-Fi to an iPad, but often it wouldn't show particular channels. The company says kinks are still being worked out of the system.

Funding

Aereo has more than $25 million in venture capital backing, with more than $20 million of it coming from a funding round led by InterActiveCorp, which owns Match.com, Ask.com and other websites.

Diller, the chairman of InterActiveCorp and the former CEO of Fox, says he's "excited" about Aereo and the chance it has to disrupt the way TV is consumed.

Aereo exploits what it believes is a loophole in the laws governing retransmission of local broadcasts. Yet TV networks and stations are unlikely to buy that legal justification, and could drag Aereo to court.

Representatives of CBS, NBC and ABC and the National Association of Broadcasters had no comment on Aereo's launch.

Retransmission

Cable companies pay local broadcast stations for the right to retransmit their signals to subscribers. Aereo doesn't, and founder and CEO Chet Kanojia says it doesn't have to.

That's because Aereo doesn't use one big antenna to pick up the local broadcasts and relay them to the Internet. Instead, it uses one tiny antenna for each subscriber that's watching.

Aereo has created a dime-sized TV antenna, and crams hundreds and perhaps thousands of them into boxes the size of a dishwasher. The company places these boxes anywhere they can pick up local TV signals.