Supreme Court hands US cable companies a giant victory over Barry Diller cheapo TV firm Aereo. 'It's over now,' he says.

Media mogul Barry Diller,big name backer of Aereo , was encouraged by earlier lower court rulings refusing to intervene, so the Supreme Court vote is a major reverse. He told CNBC , " “It’s not a big (financial) loss for us, but I do believe blocking this technology is a big loss for consumers.

" I salute (Aereo boss) Chet Kanojia and his band of Aereo'lers for fighting the good fight. We did try, but it's over now."

The Supreme Court justices ruled 6 to 3 that Aereo was infringing on the networks' copyright and that Aereo was equivalent to a cable company, not merely an equipment provider.

Three of the court's most conservative members voted in favour of Aereo: Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Stephen Breyer, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan ruled against the company.

AdAge said it was “a resounding victory” for broadcasters such as CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, who argued that Aereo was stealing the networks' signals. Bloomberg commented that the decision looked like a fatal blow for Diller's dream of transforming TV.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves released a statement following the ruling. "We are pleased with today's decision which is great news for content creators and their audiences."

The Walt Disney Company agreed. "We're gratified the Court upheld important Copyright principles that help ensure that the high-quality creative content consumers expect and demand is protected and incentivized," it said in a statement.

Aereo claimed its technology does nothing different than consumers already do with antennas and DVRs of their own - just with dedicated, remote antennas rented individually to them by Aereo.

What will Aereo, now operating in 11 US cities , do now? One suggestion: They could even even pay retransmission fees to broadcasters in exchange for permission to use their programming. But Diller's comment "It's over now" seems to put paid to that idea.

Aereo had actually seemed to benefit advertisers in some ways, said AdAge, by expanding the number of people, cord-cutters among them, who saw the commercials in broadcast shows.

Aereo was launched in 2012 and is currently available in major cities, including New York, Chicago , and Miami . Subscribers pay anywhere from $8 to $12 a month to use mini-anntennas - a fraction of what customers paid the cable companies for their programmes .