Aereo Trial Sub Bares Benefits, Flaws of Streaming Over-the-Air TV Model

With Aereo’s fate resting on a Supreme Court ruling looming soon on the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by ABC (CED April 21 p1), the over-the-air streaming TV provider is continuing to offer subscriptions for its TV/DVR service. We signed up for a one-month trial, currently available in 11 markets, to get a feel for the potential cord-cutter service that many agree could change the broadcast TV model significantly if Aereo prevails in the case.

We opted for Aereo’s basic $8 service, which in the New York area delivers 36 channels, including the major networks, Bloomberg, and programming in foreign-language, shopping, children’s, religious, local government and lifestyle categories. In addition to New York, Aereo serves Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Miami and San Antonio, markets chosen for their population density and broadband and mobile device penetration, Virginia Lam, senior vice president-communications and government relations, told us. Lam said Austin doesn’t rank in size to cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Miami, but it has “a very large population of young, tech-savvy people."

Aereo allows each subscriber to access programming on up to five devices from a dime-size server located in the cloud. Our first choice was our Samsung smart TV so that we could compare the service on an apples-to-apple basis with our FiOS content, but that wasn’t available as an option. The service works for now only via smaller screen devices including PCs, tablets and smartphones. Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku users can push Aereo content to a TV from those devices over Wi-Fi. According to Lam, integration with smart TVs is on the company’s road map, along with expanding into additional markets.

We elected to try out Aereo with a 10-inch iPad, a desktop PC with a 20-inch monitor and a Roku 3. To get a representative sampling of content, we chose a sitcom, Modern Family; a talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live; and a fast-action sports event, an NBA game. We tried to watch Modern Family and record Jeopardy, which were on at the same time but got a message saying we couldn’t watch one show and record another simultaneously. We queried customer support and got a quick response telling us we'd have to upgrade to the $12 a month service to be able to record two shows at once, or to watch one and view another live. The upgrade package also allows subscribers to watch more than one device at once and to save 60 hours of programming to a cloud-based DVR, compared with 20 hours for the basic service. We were pleased to see that we could watch a recorded show while recording one in real time.

We began watching Modern Family on the iPad and were disappointed in the picture in the default medium-quality setting. Most scenes were smooth, but faces were pixelated often enough to be distracting. The effect was similar to scrambling techniques used to prevent identification on TV interviews. That wasn’t as bothersome on basketball as it was on Modern Family where characters’ facial reactions are as important to a scene as dialogue. The picture improved when we watched in high-quality mode on both the PC and iPad.

Jimmy Kimmel Live came across well, but the recorded show began past the opening monologue and well into the first guest interview. Users have an option to add time to the beginning or end of a recording, but a couple of minutes wouldn’t have grabbed the chunk of the Kimmel show that was missing. We wondered if the previous program had run long and the DVR didn’t make up for it, or if there was simply a timing error in the cloud-based recording.

Basketball suffered from motion artifacts, which we expected. We missed the crispness of an HD broadcast that we've become accustomed to on our FiOS system, although we were receiving a 720p feed. While it was possible to rewind and fast forward on Aereo using a slide bar, that functionality was far less precise than what we've become accustomed to with our TiVo DVR. After fast-forwarding a few times in full-screen high-quality mode, we encountered video buffering and received a message suggesting that we view in Auto mode versus high-quality mode.

We also integrated our Roku set-top box with Aereo, which allowed us to view programs on TV -- using the iPad as a go-between. Setup was well-integrated and when we accessed Aereo on the iPad, after setting up Roku, the iPad asked whether we wanted to watch on it or the Roku. We were surprised by both the seamlessness of the handoff from the iPad to the Roku box -- and on to our TV -- and by the quality of basketball blown up to a 40-inch TV. The NBA basketball feed on Aereo was noticeably inferior to our ABC feed on FiOS. It was, however, far better than the streaming MLB.com feed we get through that paid service ($129 for premium and $109 for basic), which we are unable to view on a 40-inch TV due to incessant pixelization and buffering.

Lam told us that users are given the option of video quality -- low, medium, high or auto -- to compensate for variations in broadband speed. Sunday nights, for instance, are notorious for being high-usage Internet periods, and the quality level may have to adjust accordingly, Lam noted. The auto mode adjusts the feed based on the broadband speed. Aereo recommends broadband speed of 3 Mbps, with a minimum speed of 2.5 Mbps, Lam said.

We liked a few things better with Aereo than with the TiVo experience. It was easy to search by typing in a program name without having to click through an on-screen keyboard with a remote control. Touching a show name on the guide brought up the recording options to record that one show, all episodes, or all new episodes and then it was a simple tap on a red button to set the recording -- much more convenient than having to point a remote control at the DVR and navigate through several screens. And we could tell the Facebook and Twitter worlds what we're watching, if we were so inclined, but that’s more about free advertising to Aereo than a benefit to us.

We missed having a remote control for the lean-back experience associated with watching a program on TV versus watching a tablet. We didn’t like having to touch the iPad screen or PC keyboard for every interaction with Aereo. Lam said apps are on the horizon that should improve the user experience from mobile devices.

Our overall impression was that Aereo provided a convenient, adequate, inexpensive viewing experience for broadcast TV, in much the same way that MP3s have provided a convenient way to listen to music at the expense of sound quality. There’s a significant customer base for the taking, we imagine, as an increasing number of TV viewers cut the cord and get their content through streaming video services. For now, we opt to pay the $59 a month for a premium TV package from Verizon FiOS, plus the $15 per month TiVo fee, in order to get superior picture quality, a more robust DVR and the lean-back viewing experience we enjoy. But we'll keep an eye on Aereo if it makes it beyond the Supreme Court ruling.