Aereo, a TV-on-the-go service that relies on small antennas, is getting a lot of legal attention. The bigger story should be how it is using economic breakthroughs in computing to offer a new form of TV.
...This is remarkable but perhaps more remarkable are the plunging data and transcoding costs that meant Aereo could build the site in the first place. Kanojia says the company is buying “tens of petayptes of storage” for as low as $95 a terrabyte, and that the price is dropping all the time. What this means is that when (and if) Aereo clears the legal hurdles, it can scale nearly instantly in cities and towns outside New York.
“The cost structure based on the cloud is a fraction of what it was,” he said, adding that companies like Aereo can plan businesses “on the anticipation of these cost curves being driven down.”
Kanojia credits massive R&D by the giants of the tech industry with not only lowering the costs of cloud computing but also changing consumer expectations about media and TV subscriptions. He says these changes have made it possible to offer $1/day subscriptions where consumers can come and go as they wish.