Sezmi Shutting Down Consumer Service, Shifting Focus to Partnerships
Sezmi is shutting down its consumer hybrid over-the-air/personal TV service, after struggling to gain retail distribution. Sezmi sold the service and one terabyte DMR-1000 DVR with indoor antenna ($299) through Best Buy in select markets and through Amazon, but didn’t gain the agreements it sought with other top-tier retailers and regional telcos (CED July 1/10 p2). On Monday, Amazon listed having three used Sezmi DVRs available at $100, and Best Buy was promoting the hardware at $149. Best Buy officials weren’t available for comment.
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The Sezmi system shut down Monday, but customers will be able to view TV shows saved on the DVR and can get unrestricted rental from the Sezmi on demand catalog Oct. 1 through Nov. 1, the company said in a letter Friday. The DMR-1000’s tuner won’t be able to get live TV channels effective Monday as the electronic program guide needed to access the programming is taken down, the company said. With the shutdown, Sezmi ceased all billing, including video-on-demand charges, the company said.
Sezmi officials didn’t comment Monday and it wasn’t clear whether jobs were cut as a result of the service being shut down. Among those executives who have left is Travis Parsons, vice president of business development.
The company is switching from selling hardware to providing its product and technology platform to international and U.S. broadband service providers, Sezmi said. The new strategy will enable Sezmi to “continue to develop our video solutions and provide them to service providers who will be in a better position to offer them to a much broader customer base,” Sezmi said. Sezmi delivered local channels to customers via the ATSC broadcast signal and piggybacked off leftover bandwidth to deliver additional content over unused spectrum. The broadband connection delivered Web-based content including on-demand programming, YouTube videos and Hollywood content.
Sezmi launched its service in Los Angeles in February 2010 and expanded to 10 regional markets later that year. It dropped in December (CED Dec 21 p4) the Select Plus programming package of pay-TV networks to focus on the lower cost over-the-top video Sezmi Select ($4.99 monthly fee).