The programmers have never been willing to treat OTT providers as legitimate MVPDs, if they were we would have had "internet cable" years ago. The real risk to Aereo here is that this opens up competition and will likely trigger a bunch of MFNs that will allow traditional cable companies get into the OTT market. Since the programmers' rates cards are largely based on the number of subscribers Comcast and company will be able to kill them on price.
I've been an Aereo customer since they first entered my city. I'm looking forward to paying again if they start offering a DVR-only service. I would never pay Comcast a cent for a similar service. I'm using Aereo to get away from Comcast.
Added costs, though those costs are MUCH lower than the amount per subscriber the broadcast channels currently receive (due to additional licenses to carry other channels/on-demand content), so even with the compulsory licenses Aereo can still undercut cable on cost/service.
(i) After SCOTUS characterizes Aereo as cable company, Aereo appears willing to pay statutory content licensing fees that apply to cable companies. (ii) Aereo also seeks to retain the remote DVR feature of their service because the SCOTUS ruling only applies to live or near-live content transmission.
The former would create added costs, while the latter would obviously harm Aereo's value proposition because of the lack of live sporting events. Hope they find a way to survive.