With the recent conversion of analog broadcast signals to digital, broadcasters returned 108 megahertz of spectrum to the government for auction.
Launched in March, Aereo poses a direct threat to that arrangement by capturing broadcast signals and streaming that content to customers without paying broadcasters.
To call the speakers that broadcast signals "wireless" is a bit of a misnomer.
As he describes it, Aereo merely allows customers to connect to antennae that receive broadcast signals.
Aereo starts to change that, he said, by capturing broadcast signals and streaming them to subscribers.
Instead they charge that the low-powered stations will interfere with existing broadcast signals by creating hissing noises or worse.
To put the magnitude of 4,000 lines in perspective, a television displays broadcast signals as 480 lines.
And the frequencies that carry broadcast signals are not visible, so "broadcast-light" couldn't flicker in any case.
The project will not broadcast signals into space, because scientists on the project believe humans have more to gain from simply listening out for others.
The launch in the early 1960s of geostationary satellites, which could bounce broadcast signals around the planet, allowed an event to be watched live around the world.
Aereo uses antenna farms to capture broadcast signals that can then be streamed on the Internet and viewed on a device of the customer's choosing.
