Sezmi plans to change the content industry; hands-on and video
The way video and other content is delivered is changing, there's no doubt about it, but what isn't as certain is exactly where we end up from here. So on our journey to the day when we can watch whatever we want, wherever we want, there are plenty of avenues for content like cable or satellite, internet, an antenna or whatever. Sezmi gets this and intends to bring them all together in a way that makes sense. The encouraging thing here is that the company didn't just take an existing platform and paste on some internet streaming, it created a over-the-air DVR from scratch and integrated all the various sources into a unified experience. Ok, so much for the concept, but how does it work? In principle we love the idea: you buy a box, pay a monthly service for a select number of cable TV channels and get a single interface that makes sense. The problem right now is in the implementation. While we really like some of the DVR features included, like profiles catered to each viewer (custom guide listings as well as custom recorded TV etc,) only the major broadcast networks are presented in HD (no ESPN HD for example) -- and the HD VOD content we watched showed noticeable compression artifacts. Sezmi is currently in a limited pilot in LA, but will be expanding and as it does we'll be watching to see if the dream comes true.
