Sezmi Plans Additional Markets, Wider Distribution for Hybrid TV Service

Sezmi, the hybrid over-the-air/broadband personal TV service that hopes to take a chunk from cable and satellite’s customer bases, is readying another round of markets for launch by year end. After its pilot debut in the Los Angeles metro area last November, Sezmi rolled out to 10 additional markets earlier this month, including Boston, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., and San Francisco. The service is selling through Best Buy stores in those markets and Sezmi also hopes to add more top-tier retailers and regional telcos to its distribution base, Travis Parsons, director of business development, told Consumer Electronics Daily.

Sezmi delivers local channels to customers via the ATSC broadcast signal and piggybacks off leftover bandwidth to deliver additional content over unused spectrum, Parsons told us. The broadband connection delivers Web-based content including on-demand programming, YouTube videos and Hollywood content. The $299 do-it-yourself hardware package includes a 1TB DVR, a remote control and an indoor antenna packaged in a rectangular box the size of a compact subwoofer. Subscription prices start at $4.99 for local channels, YouTube, and video podcasts. The premium Select Plus package runs $19.99, including the basic programming plus select cable TV channels including Discovery, SyFy, CNN, Bravo, Comedy Central, TLC, MTV, TBS, VH1, Animal Planet, TNT, Oxygen, CNBC, MSNBC, TCM, and others. Thousands of on-demand movies and TV shows are available from studios including NBC Universal, Fox, Paramount, Roxio CinemaNow, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, and Warner.

According to Parsons, Sezmi gives retailers a way to grow their business. He said Best Buy currently generates 20 percent of its revenue from packaged media, which is losing ground to Internet-based content. “We can help them grow the bottom line with very healthy margins,” he said, declining to specify retailer’s profit. Regional telcos, he said, benefit from having an additional service option that helps them reduce churn and offer service that’s 1/3 the cost of cable’s triple play service. Sezmi is also targeting WiMAX providers including Sprint and Clearwire. Sezmi’s pitch to consumers is no contracts, activation or cancellation fees, lower subscription prices than cable or satellite, and self-installation.

Reception could be a limiting factor to Sezmi’s growth. Parsons said the company pre-qualifies customers before they buy to ensure they can get an over-the-air signal. We plugged in a Hollywood, Fla., address through the Best Buy website and went through a series of questions before placing a Sezmi package in our checkout cart. Qualifying questions included whether we had an external antenna, type of residence (apartment, condo, other type of multi-dwelling unit or single-family home) and which floor the system would be located on. Indicating that we'd use the supplied internal antenna, we saw that we would not receive the local NBC or CBS channels and several independent stations. By adding an external antenna -- which Sezmi would provide at no cost -- we would be able to get CBS and NBC, according to the website.

Sezmi systems currently work with just one TV, Parsons said. Next-generation product, due out later in the year, will move to a client-based system based on a different box, he said, and will support multiple thin clients that can be placed around the home to support more TVs. The company hasn’t determined the cost structure for multiple TV households, he said, “but it will still be dramatically under that of cable and satellite.”