NEW YORK—Aereo intends to launch service in the San Antonio area on Feb. 19, in spite of ongoing litigation against it by broadcasters.
The San Antonio service will cover a 22-county area across Texas. Aereo’s announcement follows launches in the Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Salt Lake City, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, Denver, Baltimore and Cincinnati metropolitan areas, and its the company’s announcement earlier in January of an additional infusion of $34 million of funding. Aereo said it will announce additional launch dates for its expansion cities throughout 2014.
In the Greater San Antonio region, consumers will be able to use Aereo’s unique antenna/DVR technology to record and watch more than 30 over-the-air channels including major networks such as KSAT (ABC), WOAI (NBC), KENS (CBS), KABB (Fox), KMYS (CW) and KLRN (PBS); special interest channels MeTV, LiveWell, Create, JCTC, Trinity Broadcasting, Qubo and Smile of a Child (children’s programming) and Zuus Country; and Spanish-language channels UniMás, UniVision, Telemundo and Exitos TV. In addition, consumers will also have the ability to add Bloomberg Television.
Aereo retransmits broadcast signals to mobile devices via cloud-based storage priced at $8 for 20 hours a month and $12 for 60 hours. Broadcasters have sued in at least two markets and their quest to obtain an injunction to shut down the service is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The suits came about because Aereo did not seek to secure retransmission consent for the TV station signals.
Aereo, in the meantime, is currently supported on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch. The Aereo app for Android is currently in beta, and is available for download for devices running Android operating system version 4.1 or higher. Aereo is also supported on Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Opera, AppleTV (via airplay) and Roku platforms.
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