Walmart To Buy TV Maker Vizio For $2.3 Billion - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

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  Not gonna lie, no great loss. I bought a Vizio TV back when they were super new and it gave a very good combo of quality and price. These days they are no longer cheap and also no longer very good quality, so Wally World is welcome to them. I moved on to HiSense, which is also not great quality, but is cheaper than Vizio:)

  • Re: NGL, NGL

    Youâ(TM)re not wrong. Iâ(TM)ve purchased a total of two Vizio TVs over the years. The first was an E601i-A3 60â 1080p LED TV for $999 over ten years ago. That TV still hangs on my living room wall and used for movies, TV shows, and sports. Still has stunning colors but is starting to show its age in the current era of âoeletâ(TM)s see how dark we can make this movieâ and has banding issues when higher res dark scenes are downsampled to 1080p. Still, I quite love that TV. The sm

  • Re:

    We have a Vizio, (liked it because it wasn't some roku or Amazon Fire box) after a few months the quality of the set started going downhill (remote updates don't ya love em) we had been enjoying the their built-in free play channel WatchFree was nice and simple interface compared to Pluto.TV and didn't overwhelm the TVs little processor... but soon they got greedy and made WatchFree+ which likely pushed more data gathering or advertising, had a lousier UI, stored too much on favorites for my TV's processor

    • When my old "non-smart" TV failed and couldn't be economically repaired I bought an Iiyama signange display (4k resolution, loads of inputs) and hooked it up to a mini-itx machine running Linux, MythTV, Mopidy, VLC etc. etc. (audio goes to a hi-fi amp). This setup's been working fine for years, the picture is excellent, the sounds excellent, no-ones snooping on me, and I can watch pretty much anything TV/film related that either comes over air, via the internet or on an optical disk/other media - if it comes from the internet it's also pretty much ad-free thanks to Pi-Hole.

      "Smart" TVs are a pile of shit. Forced ads, forced telemetery, forced obsolesence, (cr)apps that stop working after a week etc. etc. etc. No thanks.

      • Re:

        You forgot to include the forced OTA firmware upgrades to further crapify.

  • Re:

    My relatives all got Vizio back when they were relatively new and the best value supposedly. ALL of them broke years ago within about a year or two of each other while the old CRT TVs all worked until they were trashed.

    Vizio seems like a perfect match for Walmart, especially now they have gone even lower than they were back then.

• This is mad. Wouldn't be surprised if the TV watches you and starts making recommendations. "Looks like your couch is out of style, how about a new one?".. "You argue with your spouse about money, how about a self help book on finances?".. "You don't send your mistress flowers, should I send some?"

  • Re:

    There are more uses than just ads. What about, for example, a gymnastic exercise program? Or AI-based updates to your social credit?

    • Orwell's novel

      The telescreen in the novel "1984" had 2-way capability for just that purpose.

      The protagonist Winston Smith was "called out" by the woman on TV leading the state-mandated calisthenics when on the uplink she saw that he was just going through the motions and not doing them vigorously enough.

  • Re:

    Vizio and TCL TVs sold at Walmart have been known for years to be "always listening" for voice commands and offloading "voice recognition processing" to remote servers in China. Walmart makes more money selling that data than it does selling the TV.

    • Re:

      That ^, The CEO of Visio came right out and admitted that they take a loss on the hardware in exchange for selling data and and advertising banners in the menus and such.
      • 1 hidden comment

    • TV watches, you!

      I mean, who knew?

• In between a service one cannot disable and invasion of privacy? I am sorry, but I do not want a device in my place that will record my audio and video without my consent and without an option to be turned off (no, really turned off), that sends this data to Gd knows where, to be amassed and sold to Gd knows who, for the sole purpose of me continuing to be a product while inside the four walls of my own house, not only for this company but to the entire world.

  If this is the digital revolution we all hoped i

  • Smart TV

    Not all Smart TVs require you to connect to the internet to watch OTA television, cable or anything on an HDMI input. I think the Android or Roku based TVs need an account to do anything. Our LG didn't need an account to fire up and watch regular TV.

    • Re:

      Some/.ers are the most out of touch techies bordering on ludites.

      Don't like ads? Use your networking skills and firewall the damn thing off. It's not that hard. Grab a different Home Launcher. It's Android after-all. Hell just root your damn TV if you feel that strongly about it.

      You don't even need root if all you wanna do is disable some of the system pre-installs. Just use ADB in network mode after enabling developer mode. EZ

  • Bit of a leap there!...calm down.

    So recording video? That's not a common feature, TMK. I am pretty confident most TVs do not have a camera built into them. Most probably don't have live mics as well, although I know the nicer rokus have the wake-up command.
    
    As far as the 80s vs 90s? You're not great with history. Internet was expensive and so were webcams for the most part in the 90s. People didn't mine data much because those Pentium 2 based servers couldn't handle the load. Even today, filming is expensive. You want to store v

• For this reason. No ads. No smarts. Just a display.

  • Re:

    They want absurdly cheap and high quality.

    You are recognizing the market reality.

• I guess for a story about TVs, some reruns [slashdot.org] (dupes) are to be expected.
• There was a time when Vizio was a pretty decent product for the amount of money they cost. Not so much any more, there are better options available at pretty much every price point, especially if you are OK with skipping a new model in favor of a previous model.
  
  However, if Vizio is wholly owned by Walmart, they have the ability to squeeze suppliers a bit and maybe lower the prices across the board, or even live with a smaller profit margin on units sold to get their TVs (or advertisement delivery boxes)

• Walmart buys brainwashing device maker Vizio for more control over the content, advertising, and access to the spyware I mean customer satisfaction data the devices collect.

• TV usage stats and any voice command stuff is advertising gold. That was the primary reason for the purchase. A good second is being able to use that network to distribute ads. I doubt the cost of the TVs themselves is of any consequence.

• Whenever big companies wander outside their field of expertise, it usually does not end well, or at least is lack-luster. The culture and knowledge to manage X rarely translates well to Y.

  True, MS eventually got into gaming hardware, but they had to subsidize it a while. And gaming has a lock-in/compatibility aspect, unlike TV's.

• During a recent update they are forcing antenna input to be routed through the internet via their Smart Cast/Watch Free app. So you no longer can select the antenna as an input. So essentially, you need internet access to watch antenna television! What's worse is the app is buggy and slow and unlikely to have the same channels you had through antenna. Disabling wifi doesn't get you're antenna channels back either. The only way to get them back is to do a factory reset and stay off wifi.

  • Re:

    Really?
    Find an attorney who loves class actions.
    Open an FTC fraud case.
    Open an FCC signal interference case.

    • 1 hidden comment

    • Re:

      Is it not understood that a TV has a tuner and a monitor does not? A smart monitor is really a computer. So is this then not a thin client COMPUTER?

      Sounds like false advertising to call it a TV.

• Vizio is notorious for the amount of spyware loaded on their TVs. I would not be surprised if they make more money selling personal data on viewing habits and from advertising revenue than from selling the damned TVs.