Building B says ‘open Sezmi’

As promised, Building B, the company offering end-to-end wholesale video offerings to service providers, has relaunched itself as Sezmi Corp. and today also unveiled a set of advanced television features that it calls the complete TV 2.0 solution.

“We want to embrace new consumer behavior,” said founder and CEO Buno Pati. “There have been partial solutions before, but this is a complete solution. Linear channels are out the window. We are offering a seamless integration of all content sources – live, stored, on-demand and Internet – personalized down to the individual viewer.”

Sezmi has developed what it calls FlexCast, a video distribution system that delivers video content over terrestrial digital TV spectrum to a receiver Sezmi designed with a smart antenna system and massive storage. Live content is delivered over broadband links, provided by the broadband ISP customers Sezmi signs, to the same receiver, which looks like a small stereo speaker. Using a specially designed remote control, individual users within the household turn on the TV set using their own button and begin viewing at a portal featuring content built around individual tastes. Within the home, the receiver is connected via Internet Protocol to set-top boxes at each TV.

Sezmi has acquired the content rights and will deliver that as part of its partnership with broadband ISPs, Pati said. In addition, Sezmi is partnering with broadcasters in the local markets it serves to use their digital TV capabilities and give them new targeted advertising revenue opportunities.

The Sezmi approach is designed to enable service providers to get into the video business using their existing broadband infrastructure, such as DSL service, “without billions of dollars of infrastructure investment.” As part of today’s announcement, Sezmi also touted its design for self-installation, further reducing service provider costs by allowing consumers to plug in their own CPE, eliminating the truck rolls and lengthy installation processes that characterize today’s IPTV services from AT&T and Verizon.

“The broadcast industry has invested $5 billion into upgrading to digital and high-definition,” Pati said. “We will help them make money on that investment. They have retained 6 MegaHertz of spectrum (in the transition to digital TV) but they don’t need it all. We lease it from broadcasters.”

“This is a solution that looks like it can get up and running very quickly,” said Ovum analyst Karen Liu. “It’s very out-of-the-box thinking, but they aren’t inventing a radical new widget. What’s inventive here is that they’ve taken two or three fairly straightforward things and combined them in a new way. All the pieces of this are under their control or under their partners’ control, which means this can be a very near-term solution.”

Sezmi did not announce any customers but it is targeting telecom service providers, particularly Tier 2 and Tier 3 companies that haven’t yet committed to building IPTV networks. Windstream President and CEO Jeff Gardner is quoted in the Sezmi press release, calling the solution “a unique opportunity for Internet service provider and telecommunications companies looking to offer customers a differentiated triple play with its on-demand, personalized and affordable video service.”

As part of that personalization, Sezmi is “extending the benefits of social networking to the TV, because we enable the sharing of playlists with friends and family,” Pati said. Another feature enables viewers to contribute to ratings or view community ratings and recommendations.

At NAB in April, Sezmi revealed two partnerships: Harris will provide the digital Network Operations Center and Sun Microsystems is providing server technology.

Today’s announcement focused on the specific features of Sezmi’s video, including the integration of broadcast and cable network programming, movies and Internet video into a package of content organized around consumer tastes in programming lists such as My Top Picks, My Genres and My Channels that appear on the TV “home page” when a specific user turns the TV on, using their unique button on the remote control.

“Consumers have complained that they have 100s of channels but it’s hard to find things,” Pati said. “You turn on the TV, and the first thing you have to do is go through an Excel spreadsheet of programming. We’ve combined the things they want – digital video recording, high-definition – with the ability to find the programming they want right away.”