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ABC 7 title cardFilmOn, the online TV service, is streaming some out-of-market over-the-air channels to at least one subscriber. Me.

As you may remember, I’ve been a FilmOn subscriber for almost a year now. This weekend, it was time to install FilmOn on a new laptop. When I went to FilmOn.com to download the software, I was surprised to see several New York City channels available under the Local Channels heading:

  • WPIX (CW)
  • WNJU (Telemundo)
  • WNET (PBS)
  • Kids Thirteen (PBS Kids)
  • ABC 7 NY (WABC)
  • NBC NY (WNBC)
  • World (the former PBS World)

I believe that World had been available already for a while, but the rest of them were new. (I’m not certain that the World feed is from New York.) This was the list available on the FilmOn web site, and only when I logged in as a subscriber; when I visited as a guest or as a registered non-subscriber, I only saw World from this group. (Update: I now see them all even as a registered non-subscriber.)

All of these channels, along with the dozens of other FilmOn channels, were available through the web site’s embedded viewer. With every channel change, that viewer showed the message “Connecting to remote antenna”, then added a preroll advertisement, even for subscribers. All of the broadcast channels included a FilmOnX bug on an upper corner of the picture; the non-broadcast channels had the FilmOn bug instead.

I installed the FilmOn viewer for Windows, and when I launched it, I saw the same group of local channels except for the ABC and NBC affiliates. The standalone viewer never adds advertisements.

The remarkable story of FilmOn defies easy summary. It’s backed by Alki David, a self-described eccentric billionaire. It launched just after the ill-fated ivi.tv, streaming over-the-air signals based on a reading of the US Copyright Act that has since been rejected by the courts. FilmOn settled with the broadcast networks, including a promise not to do that again. Then another streamer, Aereo, won a first-round court case with its technology, based on banks of tiny individual OTA antennas, one for each viewer. FilmOn jumped on that bandwagon, and may be using that method now.

(If you want more FilmOn tangents, David has reportedly been sued for harassment and replied by posting the apparent video of the incident. And FilmOn sued Fox for libel, claiming that the network was telling computer companies to stay away from FilmOn. And that was just last week.)

The really weird part is that I was watching New York locals in Denver just a few weeks ago. It was all legal; I was in a Frontier Airlines plane taxiing to the gate, and DirecTV was still on the seatback display. I had noticed that the Denver TV affiliates had not been damaged by this competition, and I wished that there were some way to watch the New York channels again some day. Now part of that wish has come true. I have no idea if I have magical status in FilmOn’s subscriber database or if every subscriber can see this. (Update: The FilmOn subscriptions page now includes the option of “Local Channels NY”. So maybe it’s not just me.) I have no idea whether this will last until morning or for years to come. That’s the thing about us free-to-air TV people. We know to enjoy what we can watch for as long as we can.

by ·Comments Off on Broadcast TV proves its worth again

TV Rabbit EarsThe past couple of weeks have underlined just how important broadcast TV can be.

First came Sandy, which wreaked havoc in the Northeast. Millions of people were left without electricity, so the internet was pretty much unavailable. Cell phones ran out of juice, and that was when they were near cell towers that were still working. In the middle of all this, people stayed as warm as they could and watched battery-powered TVs and radios for news and entertainment. As Phil Kurz wrote in Broadcast Engineering Blog, “Even as this week’s hurricane should raise serious doubts about the reliability of cellular service in an emergency, television broadcasters continue to transmit lifesaving alerts and information to the public.”

Then came Tuesday’s election, which drowned out most of the discussion of the performance of the internet during the returns. Analytic sites such as Electoral-Vote.com beefed up with extra servers but were still swamped. Long-standing media sites such as CNN saw page loads slow to a crawl, when they worked at all. During all that, the broadcast and cable news channels kept a constant update of the latest information.

The internet and broadcast should complement each other. Nothing matches the drill-down, on-demand information that the internet can provide, and so far, nothing matches the one-to-many outreach that broadcast TV supplies. As the wireless industry works to wrest away chunks of free TV spectrum, we should remember that a lot of times, wireless is cool, but broadcasting is important.

by ·Comments Off on Fleetwood Mac in the 80s with a soup kitchen

For the second straight installment of 80s videos, we turn to another band that made its reputation in the 70s. This time the band is Fleetwood Mac, whose Rumors album was mandatory for every suburban American household in 1977.

The band reunited in 1981 after a short break and recorded the album Mirage in a villa in France. One of the songs, Gypsy, had been written by lead singer Stevie Nicks a couple of years earlier. According to the lengthy Wikipedia entry on the song, it was a reminiscence of her salad days with an added tribute to her best friend, Robin Snyder Anderson.

None of that is apparent in the music video, which taps into the haunting harmonies to suggest a connection with a Depression-era waif, complete with soup kitchen footage. Russell Mulcahy directed what was then the highest-budget music video ever produced. When MTV aired it in 1982, it was the network’s first “World Premiere Video”.


The video includes the other members of the band, including dancing partner and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham. “If you watch the video, you’ll see I wasn’t happy,” Nicks said later. “And he wasn’t a very good dancer.”

by ·Comments Off on Aereo gets CEA nod, files for out-of-market patent

Aereo antenna arrayAereo, the embattled over-the-air TV streaming service, got what was effectively an endorsement from the Consumer Electronics Association. The CEA filed an amicus brief in support of Aereo as it defends a lawsuit brought by broadcasters.

Previously, consumer groups Public Knowledge and the Electronic Freedom Foundation had also filed amicus briefs supporting Aereo. And so did the Computer and Communications Industry Association. CCIA president Ed Black said, “TV broadcasters are essentially complaining that Aereo is disrupting their existing business model. However, in the past, the Supreme Court has recognized that it is best for Congress to decide whether or not it is desirable to expand protections of copyright owners to respond to changes in technology. We agree that Congress, rather than the court system, would have more flexibility to address TV broadcasters complaints without creating uncertainty for Internet innovators and investors.”

Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the CEA, said “the case will hinge on basic principles from the 1984 Supreme Court Sony Betamax case, the Magna Carta decision of our industry defining full recording of broadcast television as a fair use and allowing innovation in technology. The Aereo case, like the Sony Betamax case, is a challenge to innovative technology allowing people to conveniently access free, over-the-air broadcasting. In Sony, it was time shifting broadcasting by a VCR; in Aereo, it is accessing free broadcasting  through a computer.  In both cases, the technology expands the audience, is consistent with broadcaster-borrowed use of public spectrum for free, over-the-air broadcasting and is being challenged as it is disruptive, new and not allowing consumer control by old industries.”

So that’s all good, but another twist came to light this week. Todd Spangler of Multichannel News reported that Aereo filed a patent in February on its system to stream TV to viewers outside their “home market”. Although you can only sign up for Aereo signals from your home market (currently just New York City), you might be able to watch your streaming signal from your personal Aereo antenna even when you’re on the road. Which is pretty much what I can do with my Sling-enabled Dish Network receiver. I wonder what’s new in that patent?

Anyway, here’s a video report of what Aereo is like, if you haven’t seen it already.

by ·Comments Off on Think you own that? Naah

You've been ownedYesterday, the US Copyright Office published updated rules governing what consumers can do with some of the stuff they “own”. (The Electronic Freedom Foundation has more details.) You might be surprised what’s illegal.

Want to rip your DVD to put on your iPad to watch during a flight? Illegal, even if you own the DVD and no one else watches it.

Want to modify your Kindle Fire to run non-Amazon applications? Illegal, even if it’s just to change the background image.

The good news is that now it’s officially okay to extract video snippets from a DVD for fair use in creating noncommercial works. And it’s still okay to jailbreak smartphones, just not tablets.

The bad news, albeit not strictly related, is that the US Supreme Court will soon decide whether it’s still legal for you to sell your stuff on eBay. You see, there’s a old, common-sense principle called the “First Sale Doctrine”. When you buy something new, you have to pay (through the supply chain) royalties to the folks who created it. But after that first sale, you own that physical thing, whether it’s a book, a dress, or a DVD. You can use it as often as you want, give it to a friend, or sell it on eBay without anyone’s permission.

For what’s going on, let’s turn to Marvin Ammori’s article in The Atlantic.  “John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher, sells expensive versions of the textbooks here and less expensive versions abroad. Supap Kirtsaeng, a foreign graduate student at University of Southern California, decided to help pay for his schooling by having relatives buy him copies of the foreign versions abroad, send them to him, whereupon he’d sell those books on eBay to willing students. He’d make money, the students would save money, but Wiley might have fewer sales of its pricey American versions.”

The problem is that some lower courts have held that such foreign-created works are not bound by the first-sale doctrine. And there are a whole lot of things for sale in the US that were made elsewhere – those iPads, for instance. If it meant keeping control of secondary sales, companies might manufacture even more of their stuff overseas.

Some folks hate the idea of seeing their work freely resold. Almost 20 years ago, Garth Brooks withheld his new CDs from any store that sold used copies for that very reason. The big copyright holders would love to get another excuse to squeeze more cash from consumers.

In this ever-shrinking world, the notion of artificially raising prices in one region while selling for less elsewhere just seems silly. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but the populist group Demand Progress is planning a day of action for Monday, October 28. You can find out more information at YouveBeenOwned.org. Maybe if enough citizens let their government know what’s right, they’ll do the right thing. Maybe.