EDIT: And more coverage:
The Gadgetress
Engadget
EngadgetHD
jkOnTheRun
Gizmodo
Obsessable
TG Daily
TWICE
Silicon Alley Insider
TVPredictions
TechSpot
SlashGear
Multichannel News
ZDNet – The Mobile Gadgeteer
TheStreet.com
Electronista
Electronic House
Boy Genius Report
eHomeUpgrade
ZDNet – The Toybox
Obsessable – Product Page

In many ways the Sezmi architecture reminds me of XStreamHD‘s plans, only where XStreamHD uses satellite Sezmi uses terrestrial broadcast. The terrestrial component seems, on its face, to be very similar to the now defunct Moviebeam system. Where moviebeam used ‘spare’ NTSC bandwidth, usually piggybacked on PBS stations, Sezmi will be ATSC to broadcast their digital signals. Broadband will be used to distribute additional content. The plans to partner with 3G providers seems to indicate that they could use 3G, or the forthcoming 4G networks, such as WiMax for distribution as well. The recently auctioned 700MHz spectrum would be perfect for this kind of use.

The Sezmi system uses a main receiver in the home, which acts as a DVR with 1TB of storage. It will also have eSATA and USB ports for storage expansion. While client boxes attached to TVs in the home provide access to the content. Sezmi is looking to offer a ‘TV 2.0′ experience, with personalization for five different users in the home. Each person will see a customized menu of their own selected program. The Sezmi system will also be able to record OTA ATSC content, and access web video from sites such as YouTube.

Frankly, I just don’t see how this will succeed. Terrestrial frequency availability is limited, and even if they used H.264 they’d only get maybe 4-6 HD channels per frequency, to get more would mean highly compressing them. Providing SD content instead of HD would allow for several times as many channels, but the market is shifting to HD. And most broadband services lack sufficient bandwidth to provide a full channel lineup. I’m guessing they’ll do something like cable systems using SDV. The broadcast will be used for high demand content that is needed by more users, while the broadband will be used for content on demand – so if a user requests a specific program that isn’t ‘mainstream’ it will come over broadband. That would allow them to avoid sending the majority of the lineup into each home all the time.

But it remains to be seen what content licenses Sezmi will be able to obtain, to offer a lineup competitive to cable and satellite. As well as the pricing, which will have to be highly competitive to get users to convert. And it will only work for those who have solid ATSC reception, and it seems like broadband will be required as well.

From a technical perspective it is interesting, but as a consumer I don’t see the appeal in what they’ve announced to date.

For more information see PC Magazine, Light Reading’s Cable Digital News, and U.S. News & World Report.

The first is “Play nice with cable providers“, and he mentions the work with Comcast and Cox, and that TiVo shouldn’t compete with cable companies. But he doesn’t mention the development of the Tru2Way-enabled TiVo which could be offered to both consumers and cable MSOs and support all of the advanced services. So I think TiVo is already doing this quite nicely.

Next is “Be a software vendor” where he tells TiVo to focus on software and forget the hardware. This has come up repeatedly, and TiVo has repeatedly explained why they need the hardware. Controlling the hardware allows them to innovate and offer new features. Note that neither the DirecTiVo nor the Comcast OCAP software support most of the features available on the standalone boxes. TiVo would be a much, much more limited product if they only produced software for other vendors’ hardware. Having the standalone hardware allows TiVo to innovate and to drag the competition, kicking and screaming, forward. It provides competitive pressure.

Third is “Don’t just watch TV“, in which he extols TiVo to go beyond TV with more deals like Rhapsody and YouTube. I don’t think that’s a problem, since he’s basically telling TiVo to do something they’ve repeatedly stated will be a cornerstone of their plans.

And last is “Be social“. This one I think is worth partially quoting, because I have said TiVo should do the same things:

Be social. With nearly four million very engaged subscribers, TiVo has one of the most active social networks around. The company already lets users make recommendations and share videos. TiVo should evolve as a platform for members to talk about programs, create their own content, and share media.

Yes, please! I started suggesting similar things a few years ago. Let friends setup TiVo-based social networks to share recordings. And if that’s too daring to start, how about letting us share Suggestions – let me Suggest that my friend’s TiVo record a specific show. “Hey, check this out.” Setup discussion boards where users can share ratings and discuss shows. Let us upload the Thumb Ratings from our TiVos and match us with others who have similar tastes. There is really so much TiVo could do to foster community involvement that it is overwhelming – but right now they aren’t really doing anything. And that’s really frustrating.

Oh, and in case Dan reads this:

I do have an ulterior motive for writing this column. Right now, using a TiVo box—assuming I can get CableCard to work—means losing about half of my high-definition channels. That isn’t a trade-off I am willing to make. If TiVo could make nice with Cablevision, I could have my high-definition Dwell and watch it, too.

I presume that’s due to Switched Digital Video (SDV). Two words: Tuning Resolver. The solution is already in the works.

In further bad news for HD DVD the word out of the AVN show is that adult film studio Digital Playground, which had earlier announced a shift from HD DVD to a neutral stance, has decided to drop HD DVD completely and release their titles solely on Blu-ray due to superior sales of their BD releases tied with the Warner announcement and perceived shift in the market.

In fact, it seems that the adult video market is turning Blu in general. PC Magazine is reporting that Hustler Video Group is “leaning Blu-ray” after the Warner announcement. They plan to release 15-25 HD videos in 2008, ‘most of which will probably be Blu-ray’. Vivid Entertainment is maintaining a neutral stance, releasing both formats, for now. Wicked Pictures, which has released HD DVD until now, is now “aggressively” looking at Blu-ray options and expects to have a Blu-ray producer in the new few weeks, and have their first BD title out in the next few months. Silver Sinema said: “With the Warner Brothers decision, the market will direct the outcome.” While the adult market is unlikely to have the sway in this format war that it did in the VHS vs. Betamax war, it is a sign of the trend in the market. Via EngadgetHD.

And last, but not least, Home Media Magazine is reporting that for the week ending January 13th, the first full week after Warner’s announcement, Blu-ray took 85% of the high-def media sales, with HD DVD garnering the remaining 15%. That’s a major shift from the normal 65/35 balance that they’d been hovering around for a while. It remains to be seen if that shift is permanent or just a post-announcement spike.

I want to point out that I updated the last post to remove the details relating to the Mac software. Specifics of the Mac solution had been reported which were not authorized to be published. But there is a Mac solution coming, the details are just not releasable at the moment. No, I’m not telling, don’t bug me about it. Just remain calm.

With the new TiVo Desktop, you link it with your TiVo account online. That’s not something you do today:

Why? I’ll get into that below.

You can subscribe to a list of videocasts from an HME interface on the TiVo, and it is quite an extensive list. I didn’t get good shots of that interface, I’ll try tomorrow, but ZatzNotFunny, Engadget, and EngadgetHD all have coverage with some photos if you can’t wait.

If the videocast you want isn’t in the list, then you can go to TiVo Desktop and add it there.

The settings are fairly simple. You point the desktop at the folder where the videocast is saved on your PC. Note that the TiVo Desktop software doesn’t include the RSS feed reader to download itself, which could be a nice feature for 2.7. Instead, you use your favorite podcast software, such as iTunes, and simply point the desktop to the folder your software downloads to. You then select if you want the video automatically transferred to a TiVo or not. If so, then you set how many episodes you want transferred to the TiVo at a time and which TiVo(s) to transfer to. Finally, you can select whether or not to include subfolders.

All video is transcoded to MPEG-2 before transfer to the TiVo. The Series2/2DT units only support MPEG-2, and while the Series3 and TiVo HD have the hardware for advanced codecs, the software support isn’t there yet. In the future, once those codecs are enabled, such as H.264, it is likely that the desktop will transfer video already in those codecs ‘as is’. If the source video is high definition, and it is being transferred to a Series3 or TiVo HD, then it is kept HD through the transcode. If it is transferred to a Series2 then it is encoded as SD to enable playback. And yes, this does mean that your PC needs to be one for this to work. You don’t necessarily need to leave it on all the time, but you’ll need to have it on long enough for the PC to grab your downloads, transcode them, and transfer them to the TiVo(s).

OK, so why is the desktop linked to your account online? Because the TiVo back-end plays a role in the new system. Today each TiVo polls TiVo’s severs roughly every 15 minutes to check for new scheduled recordings, TiVoCast downloads, Unbox downloads, etc. That’s highly inefficient – nearly all of those polling calls are for nothing. There is nothing waiting to be done. And it introduces a lag when you want to start a download – up to 15 minutes. And it doesn’t scale well as TiVo’s user base keeps growing.

So what’s changed? The polling system is gone. TiVo is using XMPP now instead. What is XMPP? The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol – better known as the instant messaging protocol that powers Jabber, Google Talk, and other IM systems. Yep, TiVo is basically using instant messaging for real-time communication. Now when the TiVo server has a new recording to schedule, it will IM the TiVo to tell it. Or if there is a download to pull, it will IM the TiVo to tell it to do so. This is a much more efficient system and it eliminates latency. It is really a clever idea.

Now, the way this works with web video is that when the desktop finds a new video and has it ready to transfer to the TiVo, it sends an IM to TiVo’s servers. TiVo’s servers then send an IM to the TiVo to tell it to grab the video. Which brings up another new twist.

This does not use the TiVoToGo/TiVoToComeBack protocol, it uses TiVoCast. Yep. your PC becomes a TiVoCast server, and the TiVo grabs the video from the PC just like it does today from the TiVoCast servers online.

While I think the 2.6 web video features are great, I think the work done to implement the infrastructure could be the bigger story. Replacing polling with XMPP opens the door to all kinds of improvements. Instant starts to downloads of TiVoCast or Unbox video, or any other video source, such as Music Choice music videos. If there is a schedule change that impacts your TiVo, TiVo could tell your box to grab it right now instead of waiting a day. It even opens the door to possibly handling last minute changes such as sporting events running long, Presidential addresses, and other events that bump the schedule at the last minute. TiVo’s servers could instantly IM units to warn them of the changes. Though there would have to be a lot of additional work to provide a full service.

And being able to trigger a TiVoCast download from basically any server on the net would really open the door to 3rd party content providers to setup their own content servers – if TiVo opens this up. Right now it doesn’t sound like this functionality will be open to 3rd parties, but the foundation is there. I’d love to see TiVo update the HME SDK with the ability to trigger TiVoCast, that would be a major jump.

I have some more, but I want to get some clarifications, and make sure that it is OK to share everything before I do. But I’m excited by some of the things I heard today about the work being done. I hope to have more to share tomorrow. But right now I need some sleep.

The downside is that the software won’t be available until March, and it will keep the same $24.95 price as today’s Plus upgrade. Note that Plus upgrades are transferable, so if you already have it you’ll be able to use it in 2.6 when it is released. Mac users aren’t being left out either – Roxio Toast 9 will offer similar features for them, also in March. No word on if the next version of Roxio Popcorn will see similar updates.

EDIT: It seems PCMag was talking out of school. There is a Mac solution in the works, but at this time there is no official word on what form it will take or when it will be available.

The press release will probably hit the wire in the morning, and I’ll see what they have on display at the show when it opens.

EDIT: Here’s the official press release.