Back To The Box

For those of you with a couple of hours to spare, a judgement from the Australian Federal Court again sheds confusion of the simulcasting of scheduled TV channels all over the world.

In the UK the wonderful TV Catchup service is still live despite persistent legal threats from broadcasters and I'm still not sure how they get away with it, but I'm thankful that they do - it's the only way of getting simulcast feeds from the likes of ITV who haven't bothered to make their broadcast available on mobile devices.

Swiss company Zattoo pioneered this type of service, but demurred in the UK under legal threat.

And now the Barry Diller backed Aereo is pushing the envelope and attempting to establish a simulcast service.

In Australia it's interesting that rights owners have taken the initiative against mobile network Singtel Optus.

What is actually shown by this is that if you're not willing to provide a service that the public want, someone else will do it for you and chances are that you will lose out as a result. Trying to bring everything back to the box in the corner is no longer an option.