The Supreme Court ruled that Aereo is illegal, and violated copyright laws. The winning argument was that Aereo was rebroadcasting broadcast TV over the Internet without the permission of those stations.
However, since Slingbox, which has been around for a decade is legal, and Aereo is not, I am confused.
Slingbox is a device that plugs into a cable box (and or TV antenna) and broadband router, and lets people watch that broadcast content over the Internet.
Theoretically, one could rent an apartment or hotel, pay for Internet access and a TV antenna, plug it into a router, and never actually live there, yet have live broadcast TV over the Internet. Essentially, that’s how Aereo was run.
However, since such a service was designed to serve many customers, the Supreme Court classified Aereo in the same level as a cable provider, and would have to pay cable companies fees that they successfully negotiate with each other (not a sure thing), if they want to continue to exist.
So, Aereo-like services are now only legal (for now), if they are private. I guess I need a device like Simple TV if I want to stream broadcast TV to my Roku and mobile devices…