Not two years after Aereo’s business model
was shot down by the Supreme Court, another, slightly different attempt
at pushing local TV onto the Internet for streaming could be coming
from a partnership between Dish Network’s SlingTV and EchoStar’s Sling
Media.
On Friday, Dave Zatz of Zatz Not Funny! said he had received a tip
from a source indicating that Sling Media would be pushing out what is
essentially a set-top box that would help Sling TV subscribers watch
local TV from the Sling TV app. If that’s not confusing enough, the box
will apparently be called AirTV, per an Echostar trademark application Zatz reported on last year.
As a result, customers of Sling TV will be able to buy an
AirTV box that will look very similar to Sling Media’s M1 Slingbox,
which will connect to your home antenna and your home network via Wi-Fi
or Ethernet to push local channels to your mobile device or browser.
“I’ll go ahead and assume the ultimate goal here is for the OTA channels
from one’s residence to be co-located amongst the pay television
channels of Sling TV’s $20 streaming service in a unified guide,” Zatz
wrote.
Sling TV launched last year
with a pared-down assortment of cable channels that users pay a monthly
fee for—like standard pay-TV but over the Internet and with fewer
filler channels. Marketing the product to cord-cutters, Sling TV created
accessory bundles that customers could buy on top of the basic
subscription if they needed more sports or entertainment news. Just this
week, Sling TV announced
that for an extra $20 a month, customers could stream channels to three
devices simultaneously and would get Fox Sports, FX, and National
Geographic channels.
Sling TV casually mentioned in the same announcement that customers
in select markets would have access to Fox local broadcast
channels—perhaps a sign of what’s to come.
Sling TV did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.
Supporting the information given to him by his source, Zatz also
notes that updates to the code for Sling TV’s iPhone and Android apps
carry mention of “AirTV” and that "Sling Media owns airtv.net and their VP of marketing set up a Twitter account under @airtvus."
Sling TV has largely had success in bringing together a decent roster
of cable TV channels for streaming. But national networks with myriad
local affiliates make it difficult for a company like Sling TV to carry
those channels—especially if any time-shifting is going to occur on the
user’s end. Those affiliates need ad dollars from the local used car
dealer and local carpet installer, after all.
That was part of the problem with Aereo, too. The streaming service
pushed local, free TV from the airwaves to the Internet for users to
stream, keeping an antenna for every customer in a warehouse to get
around accusations that the service was improperly distributing local
networks’ content. Ultimately, however, the Supreme Court did decide that Aereo was violating copyright rules,
writing in its decision, "these behind-the-scenes technological
differences do not distinguish Aereo’s system from cable systems, which
do perform publicly.”
If AirTV comes to pass, it promises to be less behind-the-scenes but
also probably less intuitive for customers than Aereo was. As Zatz
writes, "Unlike Aereo, ingesting the locals requires good HDTV reception
at home and some technical know-how—as with all prior Slingbox
solutions, there’s a certain amount of complexity. The challenge will be
educating consumers as to AirTV’s value while overcoming installation
and home bandwidth challenges.”
The ghost of Aereo rises: Local TV streaming coming to Sling TV, sources say
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