DVR Chatter

The whole time I'm reading about Sezmi, a new TV service that utilizes three different technologies to deliver video content to customers, I'm thinking "This is so going to fail."  The question is: How long until it does?

Am I cynical? Probably.  But how many of these hybrid services have we seen come and go?  A lot more than have stayed.

Here are the basics:

At its heart is a TV set-top box that receives video content in three different ways. Two are available through other means: digital over-the-air local broadcasts, the kind that are available to anyone with a digital TV and a rabbit-ear antenna; and Internet downloads through the home's broadband connection.

The third delivery method would be unique to Sezmi. It plans to have local TV stations use vacant portions of their airwaves to transmit basic cable channels like Nickelodeon and Discovery. Given the limited spectrum available, the stations won't be able to transmit a full lineup, and only some of it will be in high definition. Sezmi plans to mitigate that by having stations send out the most-watched shows and have the set-top boxes save them on their hard drives, making them available for viewing on demand.

OK - so for my local HD content and for the most popular cable channels, I've got to have good OTA reception?  Well, I don't.  So now what?  Fail.

The additional over-the-air cable content is reminiscent of a service called MovieBeam, which was started by The Walt Disney Co. When it shut down in December after a four-year run, it had 1,800 subscribers.

I hope this service can survive with less than 1,800 subscribers. 

Sezmi is counting on phone companies, and perhaps also wireless carriers, to market the service as a bundle with Internet service. A cheap TV product would give landline phone companies a way to fend off the encroachment of cable companies, who are rapidly signing up people for their voice services.

The largest phone companies, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., have their own TV services, but they're expensive to roll out. Smaller companies, like Embarq Corp., have marketing deals with satellite companies, but those yield little in the way of synergies.

So who wasted their money on this?

Its funding comes from six venture-capital firms, including Morgenthaler Ventures, which helped Apple Inc. get off the ground.