Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)We took part in the Sezmi Beta testing program earlier this year, trying out the service and box for about 4 months before signing up for it officially. Initially the box performed rather poorly, with the operating system and DVR software obviously still going through revisions and testing, but that was to be expected - we were Beta Testers after all. This improved with software updates, and the latest version performs much better, but not without some bugs still.
Tuning took some experimentation and adjustment of the antenna with repeat scans to get a decent signal. Initially we were on the first floor of our apartment building and reception was a little iffy for some stations, but after we moved up to the second floor where there were fewer obstructions the reception improved considerably. I actually found I was able to get further signal improvement by connecting an old passive single pole antenna that came with an Elgato TV unit into the coax socket at the back of the Sezmi antenna converter box. Sezmi do offer a second antenna that uses their proprietary connectors, but the coax connector allows you to use pretty much any third party antenna as well. Most local stations come in at a decent signal level.
We have been long-time Tivo subscribers - we bought one of the first generation Tivo units and have pretty much evangelized Tivo ever since. However, Tivo's contractual disputes with DirecTV meant that we could no longer get the combo unit and we were forced to use DirecTV's own HD DVR, which was slow, not to mention the gross expense of the service. We had been keeping an old Tivo unit running just for loyalty, but didn't want to pay the cost of Cable TV to use it, so when we heard about Sezmi it seemed the perfect alternative.
There are obvious similarities between Tivo and Sezmi, but where Sezmi primarily differs is in allowing viewers/users to create their own customized 'zones' which learns their own viewing habits and records their own shows independent of other users. A user's own interface is customizable by setting a color scheme to differentiate it from other users, and each is accessed via a color-coded button on the remote, which all works quite well, albeit the switch between users can be rather slow (more on speed issues further on). This is a nice feature as it allows separation of content for families or multi-viewer homes, where peoples viewing tastes may differ (husband: science and sci-fi, wife: reality and home/garden, kids: cartoons and music) etc.
The choice of channels for the price is impressive. For the basic $4.99 a month you get all the local networks in HD, but for $19.99 a month you can add a good selection of "cable" networks which would normally only be available through a local Cable or Satellite provider. We found the choices available to be a good cross section of the main channels we used to watch on Satellite, such as Discovery, TLC, Science Channel, SyFy, Planet Green (one of my wife's favorites), VH1, amongst others. All of these additional channels are received via the antenna alongside the regular local networks. They're obviously encrypted so that you can't view them if you only have the basic package. The local networks are all received in HD and are picked up from the regular over the air transmissions that you would get if you just hooked up an antenna direct to your TV - what you're paying the $5 a month for is the DVR, Guide, and on-demand services at that point. The higher priced package allows you to receive the other channels which are decrypted by the DVR. The downside to all the additional channels is that they're not in HD, only SD, and the quality is, at times, barely SD. Getting decent reception for these extra channels is fairly hit or miss and depends a lot on where you live and your proximity to transmitters. We are in the middle of Los Angeles and we had continual problems with picture and sound breaking up and delays in the channel changing while it found and decrypted the transmission.
One thing to note about Sezmi is that it really isn't geared towards being a "Live TV" system - something that becomes obvious when you realize that there is actually no "STOP" button on the remote. In order to watch "Live TV" one must go to the Guide and select the channel and show one wants to switch to. Live is not the default state. It is really designed to be a system that is used to pre-record pretty much everything to be watched later. This is one of the reasons behind having the massive storage capability - it allows the system to record a LOT of content!
The DVR software, although competent, and providing for a LOT of storage capacity, has a lot of difficulty dealing with poor/broken signals. A lot of the time, if there is any kind of signal degradation during a recording, then that show becomes unwatchable on playback. The image breaks up, the sound stutters, and probably about 75% of the time the DVR functions become unusable because the scrubber cannot determine time codes and gets completely confused as to where it is supposed to jump to. Fast forward and Rewind functions lock up, skipping ahead sometimes works, and sometimes the show will just restart right back at the beginning, but when you reach the troubled area again it just goes haywire. This is something that really needs to be fixed - some kind of check in the playback functions that looks for loss of integrity in the signal and unmatched time codes and attempts to jump over the problem area rather than try and play it. The system has some other anomalies that should be dealt with sooner rather than later - it has a tendency to be somewhat overzealous when deleting shows by itself. On several occasions I went to watch one of about two dozen saved episodes of a show only to find that about half of them had been deleted by the system, but they did not then appear in the Deleted Items folder for me to recover. Shows that are manually deleted by the user go there, but shows deleted by the system (I assume to free up space or because it felt they had expired) do not.
There have been a few other niggles with the system that should be noted, and while not deal-breakers, they do cause some usability issues that can make the system less than ideal. When using the Guide, it is dreadfully slow - taking between 5 and 20 seconds to refresh the current channel listing EVERY time you move the channel selector up and down, which can be painfully tedious - how on earth this couldn't be cached is beyond me. This is an often repeated function and the user should not have to wait repeatedly every time for the guide to refresh. It becomes incredibly annoying and makes the system cumbersome to use. Even DirecTV's dreadful on-screen Guide works faster than this. Additionally, popup message windows, show info, confirmations etc take rather too long to disappear. Another annoyance is a bug that causes paused shows to automatically start playing again when you switch back and forth between users, meaning you have to remember to hit Pause again as soon as the switch is complete. Speed of the system overall is definitely a major issue - the response of the device to button presses on the remote is probably only at about 85%, seemingly a result of the system being busy doing something else to react immediately to the remote, so responses are cached, however the lack of feedback means that one tends to try pressing the same or other buttons several times and when all those cached responses are then suddenly executed you end up with undesirable results. Speed of the system appears to be related to the number of saved recordings - the more shows you have saved, the slower the system gets. When you compare the speed of Sezmi to a TiVo, it's like comparing night and day. If you have used TiVo and you know how fast the on-screen guide responds to navigation and how quick it is to set up Season Passes and delete content, you will be extremely frustrated by the sluggishness of Sezmi.
Sezmi is certainly new, and it is certainly innovative - it has a LOT of potential, but it also still needs a LOT of work to make it truly usable on a day to day basis without being frustrating. The DVR software, Guide and Navigation overall need to be optimized to speed them up and make the user experience less cumbersome. If you're willing to put up with some bugs and work around some of the issues, then Sezmi is a great alternative to the much higher priced cable and satellite services. It's not a full-on replacement for those... yet, but it could be. If the additional non-local "cable" channels delivered were in HD and there was a wider selection, then even an extra tier at, say, $30/month, would be cheaper than basic cable or satellite. Combine that with a better UI and DVR software that works more effectively, and Sezmi will certainly give the big names a run for their money.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Sezmi DMR-1000 All-in-One Personal TV Service, Black
Sezmi connects you to the TV entertainment you care about by providing access to unlimited content, delivered in a smart, personalized experience - at a fraction of the cost of cable or satellite. Welcome to the next generation of TV: Sezmi Personal TV. Sezmi Personal TV is the all-in-one TV system that is smart enough to automatically record, organize and recommend TV shows, movies and web videos you are sure to love. And because it is designed around you, you only pay for what you use.
Click here for more information about Sezmi DMR-1000 All-in-One Personal TV Service, Black
0 comments:
Post a Comment