Senza is a connected TV app that parent Synamedia says can “transform the economics of reaching viewers” by offloading streaming controls from set-top boxes and dongles to the cloud. Synamedia claims Senza can reduce streaming costs by up to 90 percent while maintaining content security. The platform can be used to deliver to home TV screens as well as offsite locations such as bars, hotels and stadiums. “Senza moves the user experience from devices — such as connected TVs and streaming sticks — into the cloud and offers an HTML5 interface to quickly launch free, low-cost or premium services,” according to the company.

The result is “a personalized, immersive user experience with advanced graphics and AI-generated synthetic video” that will “enable an explosion of creativity in advertising and synthetic media,” allowing brands to reach consumers directly with a customized experience, Synamedia explains in a news release.

The technique relies on “‘writing once and running everywhere,’ a concept foreign to TV developers but commonplace for those developing for the Internet.”

Senza is a patent-protected network that VentureBeat calls “a disruptive solution in the realm of Over-the-Top (OTT) video services, enabling ultra-low latency video distribution and facilitating graphic-accelerated user experiences at a lower total cost of ownership.”

Senza’s Cloud Connector “receives content and the user interface over the subscriber’s Wi-Fi network and displays it on a TV,” VentureBeat writes, adding that it leverages “unique proprietary hardware with a secure cryptographic core, serialized with a unique ID and keys by Synamedia during production.”

Using a Cloud Connector that will wholesale for around $6 per unit and is “of similar size to an earbuds case, Senza turns any TV screen into a high-performance, smarter TV and unleashes unlimited creative and business opportunities,” Synamedia says, emphasizing the ability to free license the hardware design and device software to third-party OEMs in 2025.

“The hardware alone isn’t capable of much more than loading a video stream from a bare-bones menu system, but that’s the point,” reports Fast Company, which says Synamedia’s gambit is “moving all the smarts” out of the set-top box or dongle and into the cloud.

Emulating cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce NOW or Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, “Senza’s entire interface is rendered on remote servers, then streamed onto a tiny, low-power set-top box. This allows Senza to do things that would otherwise require much pricier hardware, such as flashy animations and split-screen channel viewing,” Fast Company says.

Senza integrates with Google Cloud, using its Widevine L1 encryption. For more information, check out the Senza explainer video.