Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I picked this player up for an awesome price a few days ago and have been trying everything out.
The pros:
Wireless Dual Band N: Works great with NETGEAR N750 450 Mbps Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR4000. No stutter via wireless streaming in HD with a good Wireless N router and good High Speed internet connection. Supports the "wireless authentication" button on the front of the router so setup to the wireless is super easy. (The Blu-Ray player will tell you when to hit the button on the router to auto authenticate you)
DVD and Blu-ray playback is quick and responsive and Blu-Rays load fast. No stutter in playback that I've seen. I have mostly DVDs so it was important that this does the DVDs justice as well. It does apparently upscale and does it beautifully.
The remote is a really intelligent design with keyboard on one side and Blu-ray/App controller remote on the other with specialty buttons for several of the "Apps". There is a centered V button to take you back to the home menu if you get lost. The remote is not back-lit.
Netflix works great and the keyboard really helps on those searches! Yes!
Vudu Works good and it comes with $5.99 movie credit that you don't even have to sign up for to try! An email address is all it asks for. Sweet, and as several Blue Ray disks come with free Vudu movie codes this was something I was interested in trying. All three blu-ray movies I picked up came with $5 in Vudu credit. I've watched a movie on it in HD and it played with zero issue until the App crashed at the end of the movie. reboot time. More about that in a moment...
Possible cons for some:
All buttons on front of player are VERY BRIGHT blue LEDs while this thing is on and running. If your one of those people that likes to complain about really bright lights, you're going to really hate this player and should move along to something else! It's not an issue for others.
HDMI only connection for Video. This is not an issue for modern HD TVs which is kinda the reason for buying blu-ray anyway. You will need to buy an HDMI cable in the required length, but this is normal and should not come as a surprise. These are good: HDMI Cable, 6 ft. (2 Pack)
Some of the players come with the features store display card glued to the top of the player. Goo Gone, 8 Oz.would remove this glue without issue but something you're not getting off otherwise as it is not of the rubber cement variety and is more of the super glue type. I just left the card on mine rather than ruin the paint.
Definite Cons:
Amazon Video is not ready on this device! What? It's advertised on the box like it's good to go but it is labeled as "coming soon" when you try to launch it. There is even an Amazon button on the remote. That really was a disappointment as I've enjoyed Amazon's Instant video on the Roku 2100X XDS Streaming Player 1080p. As this is a selling point for the device, Vizio needs to rectify this quickly.
The Apps, on rare occasion, lockup and don't respond regardless of what you push on the remote. Even the on/off button ceases to respond. Powering off on the player itself is required to reboot. There are definitely some bugs in the software at this time.I have not tried out, nor will I, any of the Non-video Apps like Pandora, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Someone else will have to review those.
Bottom Line: I like this player. It's not perfect, but what electronic device ever is. They do seem to be trying to fix the minor issues through updates. For the price, I'd say nothing comes remotely close to all the features that this thing offers. Are there better players? Undoubtedly, but you will pay twice as much as this one. I'm not aware of another player with this advanced a remote.
I will be updating this review as things change below:
(I noticed the other day that the player did not want to power on at all. unplugging the player and plugging it back in resolved the issue for now.)
(Still no update for device as of 6/16/11. It also appears that Amazon Video is not shown as a feature on the Vizio Website now. I have not had an issue with the player not powering up since the one experience.)
(6/20/11 : Finally an update to the firmware over the weekend. One question answered is that the 48MB needed for the update must be built-in as I did the update via the wireless connection and did not attach a thumb-drive to the player. Firmware updated fine with zero issue (cautions you not to power cycle the player during the update). The player power cycles itself when complete and will come back on by itself so don't get impatient when it goes off during process. Even with fast Internet the update process takes about 2 mins. No Amazon yet.. but Now have YouTube and Internet Videos apps. Both seem to work great and did some searches for several things in YouTube with nice results bar, left and right navigation to skip to next result and same search results you'd get via PC! Nice! Netflix and other apps still work great! (One thing I'll note here is that I actually like the Netflix App on this player better than I do on the Roku as you get more results and also categories that aren't randomly changing or disappearing. Recently Watched for example. Also more results in categories such as new releases.) The Qwerty Keyboard is just as awesome as ever in all the apps.
(07/05/11: Used the Player quite heavily over the July 4th Weekend Holiday! No lockups, or issues with device at all! Youtube app is excellent! Netflix App is fantastic as well and shows far more results under categories than My Roku player. No issues with Wireless connection to my router as that is how I use it.
I noticed today that Amazon has the device under review due to complaints... Probably about the description of Amazon Video being available on it. Someone else on here had said that both Hulu Plus and Blockbuster don't work. That is false. Both seem to be functional and I even watched some sample "free episodes" on Hulu Plus. Seems to work good. Not a 100% on Blockbuster, but frankly I don't wish to pay their high prices per movie to test the HD quality of their stream. Otherwise their app seems fine. I believe some people may be confusing this model Vizio Player with 2 others that look identical.)
(07/08/11: Update: According to Vizio customer support:
Vizio identified a performance issue With Amazon Video and they are working with Amazon directly to resolve the issue prior to launching the application. The update to your player will be automatic as long as it is connected to your home network. There is not a set date of release at this time.)
(07/11/11 Update: Tried the Vudu movie app again over the weekend using two $5 promo codes that came free with some $10 Blu-Rays. Both Movies played flawlessly in 720P HD via my Wireless N connection. I ran the test for HDX at 1080p and it passed fine as well...just didn't see the need for the $1 extra for HDX quality as the HD looks so good! Used the player for Netflix all weekend and also tried out the Vudu app to adjust the screen borders. No issues at all!)
(The Latest: 07/18/11: Noticed Netflix was down about 6-7 hours on Sunday, Not just from the Vizio but apparently from everything. Used the time to Watch a DVD on the player. Works great with the up-scaling! I also looked for the "look for update" selection on the player. The selection is now missing from settings section so apparently they've removed it from the menu..this seems to jive with Vizio saying future updates should be automatic. Tried out "factory reset" option which will wipe your wireless, sound and picture settings on the player, but doesn't change your app settings. Some of the other resets will.
** Here's a tip for the player. If you're going to shutdown the player, go back to the main app selection page first and then power off. No lockups to report since patch.)
Be sure to check out my guide on "Cut the Cable Cord" as it contains some good info on bandwidth requirements for various types of streaming video.
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