Mari and I sat in on the Sezmi webcast briefing earlier this week and we’ve been slow in covering the news… As it turns out, this gives me an opportunity to provide some clarity in response to the widespread confusion.

At a high level, Sezmi (formerly Building B) is a video service with the goal of replacing our existing cable or satellite provider (television programming), and enhancing value by providing additional content (think Internet) and new methods of interaction.

Business Model
Consumers won’t be Sezmi’s direct customers. Sezmi’s plan is to offer sidelined broadband providers, telcos, and local television franchises a platform to offer television services (including advertising) without having to roll their own solution. They haven’t announced any distribution partners yet but, with imminent trials and plans to launch by the end of the year, there’s at least one company on the hook. Obviously, Verizon (FiOS TV) and AT&T (Homezone, U-verse) are spoken for. Given the mega quadruple-play alliance dissolution and forthcoming WiMax push, Sprint’s a likely target. I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear of Sezmi going after Qwest or even an Earthlink. Though, perhaps I’m thinking too big here…

Content Distribution
Sezmi will be using a hybrid approach to receive (and in many cases, provide) content including local over-the-air broadcasts, transmission of “cable” channels via leased (or partner/reseller) airwaves (see USDTV, rip), and the Internet. Sezmi hasn’t announced which premium content providers they’ve signed, though the USA Network was featured in the webcast.

Hardware
The initial Sezmi (leased) hardware package consists of an antenna unit which includes 1 terrabyte of storage, set-top box, and remote. The long-term goal is to transform the STB into more of a thin-client with the NAS providing most of the heavy lifting - and supporting multiple STBs throughout the home.

Software
For me, the most interesting portion of the webcast was a live demo of the Sezmi interface/experience - which they’re calling “TV 2.0.” (Many screengrabs below.) In addition to the DVR functionality you’d expect, Sezmi provides some innovative new ways of integrating, organizing, and presenting content. I wouldn’t go so far as saying they bring social networking to the TV (though, that’s one of the things they’re saying), but the per-user playlist plus sharing and community rating features are overdue and appreciated.

Odds
Several folks have asked me if these guys are going to succeed. It’s difficult to handicap the odds without knowing who Sezmi’s initial partners are. Which brings up the probable point of this pre-announcement: drumming up interest on both the potential distributor/reseller side and on the content provider side. Breaking into the TV business as a new player will be difficult (and expensive), and neither building out compelling solutions nor educating customers of the added value is guaranteed against the entrenched players. At the very least, they’ll need to sign resellers with some serious muscle to have a just shot at pulling it off.

Update: Sezmi’s asked me to remove a dozen screengrabs, given non-finalized network deals and evolving interface.

The latest TiVo hack doesn’t actually require any hacking. Last fall, TiVo partnered up with Creston to integrate the Series3 into their home automation framework. While I haven’t heard anything since, it turns out the hooks are wide open (via Omikron) to any application or hardware on one’s home network - and possibly well beyond by implementing router port fowarding. Until something more polished is developed, the telnet protocol allows you to manually feed a variety of remote commands to a networked TiVo. For example, in the video above, I’m using a terminal application on my jailbroken iPhone as a rudimentary WiFi remote control. There’s some real interesting potential here…

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SnapStream, the folks behind Beyond TV DVR software, offered Team ZNF a look at the Firefly RF media center remote control ($50). While Brent’s finalizing his review, he shipped the remote back to play with before we give it away on ZNF. The Firefly controls a wide variety of media apps out of the box, including Beyond TV and Vista Media Center (VMC), plus it can be customized to support additional programs. Generally speaking, RF is preferable to IR due to increased range and fewer line-of-sight issues. And the Firefly is certainly superior to my wireless Microsoft keyboard and mouse in controlling VMC from the La-Z-Boy. However, RF’s not going to turn my plasma on… Next!

Gamefly ships Grand Theft Auto.

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs:

• Comcast Launches AnyRoom: Media Experiences 2 Go
• Mac Mini as Windows HTPC: Brent Evans Geek Tonic
• Grand Theft Gamestop: Davis Freeberg’s Digital Connection
• New Motorola VDSL2 Gateways: Media Experiences 2 Go
• Teaching Time Warner Clear QAM: Brent Evans Geek Tonic
• Femtocells, Region by Region: Media Experiences 2 Go

Over the past few days buzz has been building over the possible launch of a Stage6 clone. According to the DivxIT.net website, a Stage6 “alternative/clone� will be revealed on April 29th. If this is true, it would be an exciting development for fans who still crave the high quality Stage6 experience.

This isn’t the first time that someone has tried to hype the launch of a Stage6 replacement. As soon as Stage6 announced their shut down, there was a flurry of fake Stage6 clone announcements. Most of those sites fizzled out before they even got started.

NewStage6.com was the first “replacement� to pop up on my radar. Initially they had a timer counting down until their launch, but today, the site is all but empty. Highlol.com was another website that tried to create buzz around the Stage6 collapse. They promised free HD DivX downloads, but there still aren’t any videos on the site today.

Having already been burned a couple of times, you can understand why I tend to be skeptical about these sorts of promises. With DivX Inc. having come out and denied any affiliation with the site, I can’t help but wonder how far they will let this get before they try to shut it down. On the other hand, because DivX benefits from having more of their content out there, maybe they are really better off ignoring it. Still, if DivxIT does gain traction, DivX might not be so happy about someone copying their site, especially when they don’t seem willing to sell it to begin with. If DivX does try to go the hostile route, I think that they may be up against more than they realize.

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Canada’s national television network, Global, is now broadcasting in HD in the Metropolitan Toronto and Golden Horseshoe areas of Ontario on their Hamilton (CHCH) and Toronto (CIII) affiliates. Global is Canada’s last major nationwide network to start broadcasting in HD. It was facing a June 2008 hard deadline imposed by the CRTC to begin broadcasting. It had missed previous CRTC-imposed deadlines.

Global (CHCH on 11-1 and CIII on 41-1) follows CTV (CFTO on 9-1), CBC (CBLT on 5-1), CityTV (on 57-1), SunTV (on 66-1), Omni1 (CFMT), Omni2 (CJMT) and CRC (CBC French) all of which had been broadcasting in HD for some time. TV Ontario is not yet broadcasting in HD.

Depending on their southern exposure, Torontonians can also expect to receive ABC (WKBW on 7-1), CBS (WIVB on 4-1), NBC (WGRZ on 2-1), Fox (WUTV on 29-1), PBS (WNED on 43-1), Think Bright (on 43-3), CW (WNLO on 23-1), RTN (retro TV on 7-2) and other U.S. networks broadcasting in HD from up-state New York.

All these channels are available free to anyone in Metro Toronto that has an inexpensive UHF antenna and an HDTV or other settop box with an ATSC tuner (a.k.a. HDTV tuner). Many HDTVs have ATSC tuners built in as do TiVo HD and TiVo Series 3 units.

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After probably feeling some heat online in the last week or so (here and here for example), the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) rounded up a bunch of journalists (mainstream press and bloggers) for a conference call today. They presented a bit of CableCARD history in how we got here (SDV) and where we’re going with tru2way, followed by a Q&A session. Obviously, the perspective presented is their own and may not line up exactly with the how the CEA, FCC, or an educated consumer might present it.

No new details on the SDV Tuning Resolver were provided, though TiVo was mentioned quite a few times as being involved in the process. And they’re still shooting for Q2 delivery… though, we shall see. I suspect at least three manufacturers will provide the adapter later this year, and we already know Motorola’s solution will be on display with TiVo next month at The Cable Show:

Motorola will demonstrate its MTR700 Tuning Adapter which connects unidirectional UDCPs (including a TiVo device, in specific) to a cable network, accessing multimedia content in the cable network’s switched digital video (SDV) tier. Seamless tuning of the TiVo device across both broadcast and SDV tiers will be shown.

More of my recent SDV/CableCARD thoughts can be found here and Megazone’s take is also worth checking out.

Interesting call factoid: 380,000 CableCARD deployments. I wonder what (large) percent are TiVo owners… And if we assume most Series3 and THD customers use at least one CableCARDs, perhaps we can extrapolate the number of units out there.