Aereo will be expanding its live TV streaming service to Chicago on September 13, CEO and founder Chet Kanojia announced today at TechWeek Chicago, now bringing the number of operational markets to four total.
Aereo most recently went live in Atlanta on June 17, having already expanded to Boston in May from its home base in New York. The rollout in Chicago covers an area of 9.5 million people, so it’s the biggest market outside of New York for the upstart streaming service. It will be available across 16 counties in Illinois and Indiana.
In Chicago, major networks like WLS-TV (ABC), WFLD-TV (FOX), WMAQ-TV (NBC), WBBM-TV (CBS) and WYCC (PBS) will be available, along with Bloomberg and other over-the-air special interest and foreign language channels.
Aereo uses the Internet to stream live over-the-air TV signals to subscribers who use its unique antenna, and they can watch on a computer or compatible mobile device. The service also has DVR features that let subscribers pause, rewind and fast-forward through programs, and even record them for later viewing.
Counties in Illnois that will be able to use the service include, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, La Salle, Lake, McHenry and Will. In Indiana, Jasper, La Porte, Lake, Newton and Porter will be eligible.
It’s unclear what reaction, if any, networks will have to this latest expansion, having already waged an ongoing legal battle to shut Aereo down. Part of the dispute stems from the fact Aereo doesn’t pay retransmission fees to the networks it streams, and that there are no agreements in place on ad revenue from commercials played on those channels. Fox and CBS have threatened to pull their OTA signals and go cable-only if Aereo isn’t made to stop its operations by the courts.
For Aereo, it seems it’s business as usual, where the service offers a membership starting at $8 per month for access and 20 hours of DVR storage. For $12 per month, subscribers can upgrade to 60 hours of storage. There is also a 30-day trial to try out the service before paying anything.
Aereo had initially stated earlier in the year that it would aggressively expand to 22 markets across the country in 2013, yet Chicago is only the third of those so far and it will go live in September. The likelihood that a further 19 will go live by the end of the year seems a bit far-fetched at this point, though Kanojia has hinted more announcements are looming.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
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