Aereo's Service Wins a Reprieve (for Now)

Aereo Inc. got over one hurdle this week when a U.S. District Court Judge dismissed one of three claims by several major broadcasters. The broadcasters are seeking an injunction that would shut down the service (offered only in New York City for now), which features a network DVR and an array of thumb-sized antennas that capture over-the-air digital TV signals that, in turn, are delivered to subscribers via broadband. The broadcasters claim Aereo violates copyrights, but the court tossed out the claim of unfair competition, claiming it was pre-empted by the Copyright Act, AP reports. (See Could Aereo Deflate the TV Business Model? and Diller Says Aereo Doesn't Sell Content.)

The Cable Show in Boston drew an expected 12,000 attendees, down 8 percent from the 2011 show in Chicago, reports Multichannel News.

ActiveVideo announced the general availability of CloudTV H5, an HTML5-based platform that pipes navigation interfaces and apps to digital set-top boxes and IP-connected devices. ActiveVideo's biggest customer is Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC), but it appears that Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) is at least giving the company's technology a look. During a presentation at The Cable Show, Steve Reynolds, Comcast's SVP of customer premises technology, mentioned that the operator "has some activities going" with the vendor.

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) is using tuners from MaxLinear Corp. to help power its new family of Puma6 chips for Docsis 3.0, including a high-end, media gateway configuration that can bond 24 downstream channels and pump out speeds close to 1 Gbit/s. MaxLinear's tuners also feature Full Spectrum Capture (FSC) technology that can tune up to 1GHz and pluck channels anywhere and combine them for D3 channel bonding. (See Intel's New Docsis 3.0 Chip Guns for 1-Gig .)

Minerva Networks Inc. has launched a version of its iTVFusion 5 video software tailored for the cable market to support a new breed of QAM/IP set-tops and gateways. Minerva's promise is to offer a unified user interface for services delivered to TVs and connected devices. Harmonic Inc. (Nasdaq: HLIT) has already integrated it with its digital headend platform for IP and traditional broadcast video services.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable