Gadgetory

it's the end of reo as we know it I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET update this week while Google is showing off shiny new smart watches at its conference in San Francisco the television start-up Aereo is dealing with a death sentence the US Supreme Court ruled that the two-year old service violates copyright laws it was a convenient way for cable cord cutters to watch live local TV instead of installing an antenna in your home to get free over-the-air broadcast channels you could just pay $10 a month for Aereo to handle everything for you your tiny antenna was in a room with other customer antennas and the company sent that TV signaled to you over the Internet Aereo did this without paying for any broadcaster retransmission fees because of the antenna loophole it was argued that it was like an equipment rental company but the court shut that loophole down and ruled that Aereo is no different from a cable company with fancier technology since it was broadcasting copyrighted works to the public by all counts it looks like this is the end of Aereo and if there is a way it can continue it would have to evolve to offer a different type of service if you want to watch broadcast TV without paying for cable you'll have to stick with subscription services like Amazon Netflix or Hulu but new episodes sometimes are delayed by as much as a week there's also the option of a digital antenna there are a few companies out there that are trying to make the rabbit ear experience a bit more snazzy take for example a product called Moe who channel's the antenna and box combo offers a channel guide it mashes up the free broadcast stations with apps and a web browser it'll go on sale soon for $150 in other news apple's ipod touch line got a bit of a reboot the ipod touches which are basically iphones without the phone they all dropped in price and the cheapest model with only 16 gigs of memory now comes in all the bright colors and Apple added a camera to the back before only the two higher memory models got the back camera with all six color options so that means now the cheapest iPod Touch is $200 it doesn't make much sense to buy an iPod Touch if you already have a smart phone but if you wish your iPod was an iPhone you can use a mobile hotspot to give it wireless access wherever you go so you can stay in touch with messaging apps or with Skype freedompop is one that makes a hotspot case that fits your iPod touch now the coverage may not be perfect in your area but you do get 500 megabytes of 4G data for free every month that's your tech news update you can get more details on these stories at cnet.com and you can stay updated by following along on twitter from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey