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Comment by brk | Hacker News Reader

I've followed the Aereo stuff going on. Not heavily, but with more curiosity than not.

One question I've never seen fully addressed about the technology: are they literally claiming to capture a signal directly from the tiny antenna and encode/route that specific signal to a specific user with no other filtering/enhancement/etc. in between? Knowing how hard it is to get a good DTV signal, it seems unlikely that a bunch of tiny antennas buried in a data center are going to get reliably good signals. It would seem like what they are doing is capturing the signal from a better source, and then maintaining a batch of crappy antennas just to claim a 1:1 ratio of antennas to customers.

Does anyone know with reliable data how the technology really works?

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The antennas aren't "buried in a data center", they're housed in RF-transparent rooftop enclosures with line-of-sight (and reasonably close proximity) to the broadcast source.

Full disclosure: I work there.

Thanks for the clarification. Some other tech article I read last year didn't really clarify it, and the pics made it look like the antennas were basically on some form of a PCI card, installed in racked servers.

So then you're saying that two customers using Aereo watching the same broadcast channel are getting uniquely encoded signals, and one could theoretically be connected to an antenna that had poor reception/signal (for whatever reason) and the other could be connected to an antenna with a better signal, and they'd see visibly different image streams?

Yup. Our CEO gave a similar example (15:30) on C-SPAN a few days ago:

"If one individual consumer's antenna — let's say a mosquito sits on it or it fails because the associated electronics failed — your screen goes dark and your neighbor is fine".

"Neighbor" here meaning "the person using the antenna next to yours".

http://www.c-span.org/video/?318908-1/communicators-chet-kan...

Side note: As a front-end engineer, I can tell you it's pretty cool to know that on the other end of your app there's an individual piece of tangible equipment interacting with the physical world. That's pretty unique.

It's so frustrating to watch that interview. He gives an initial summary of the situation and then the journalists ask him the same rephrased question over and over again.

So, looking at the TechCrunch video[1], are the antennae in the silver boxes seen at 2:30? I'm curious why we got to see the rest of the infrastructure but not these antennae other than their housings.

And if the box has 160 or so units per board, is all the 8VSB RF decode in there as well? The tour seems to imply that.

160 units capturing 18 mbit/sec (max) per 8VSB would be 2.88 gbit/sec going off to transcoding. But the module is using a 1 gigabit pipe? Or are all three ethernet cables attached to that module sending video?

[1]http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/aereo-shows-off-their-rooft...

I was reading an article this morning that goes a little into their setup: http://www.cnet.com/news/inside-the-tech-that-tossed-aereo-t...

Yes, they claim to have a dedicated antenna for every user, a dedicated transcoder for every user, and a dedicated dvr box for every user.

I don't know if the courts are having external experts come in to audit their technology, but it seems like its safer for them to simply make it work the way they claim than to have gone through so much trouble to fake it.

Yes, it's been audited. The Super Bowl was an example of when the 1:1 was "proven" because they had to stop taking customer signups because they ran out of antennas. The same thing stopped them from briefly accepting more NYC customers.

It sounds like they're actually using each antenna, but the absurdity of this situation is that this could actually matter legally, considering the exact same service would be provided to the end user either way.

They lease space in the same building as the source.

Interesting. I wonder if they have space in Willis/Sears Tower in Chicago.

Disclaimer: My parent company throws its signal via microwave off the antenna on that building.

When the company started it was called 1:1 ratio of antennas to customers. Which the signal from that one antenna only being delivered to one customer.

If they have changed since then it would be interesting to here about the decision process that lead to the change.

> It would seem like what they are doing is capturing the signal from a better source, and then maintaining a batch of crappy antennas just to claim a 1:1 ratio of antennas to customers.

I'm not an expert, but to some extent, isn't that the same thing? Because of the way radio transmission works, any receiver is also a (re-)transmitter.

It might be that maintaining several small antennae actually improves the signal.

Not just that, the antennae are located closer to the transmission source so you don't need your own antenna on some rooftop. Quality is higher since it just gets streamed to your location. It's kind of like having an antenna on the top of your own roof, and then using something like mythtv as the dvr to stream the content to your current location (which could be far away from home).

Really? I've never had a problem with a good DTV signal.

Alot of stations went to lower power transmission with the DTV conversion, and some VHF channels are really difficult to pick up.

Its all about the antennae and location

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