Gadgetory

Nihao I'm Noah from TechnoBuffalo to all of our trainings speaking friends out there I open and mangle that too badly what is going on everybody this video is going to serve two purposes one it's a review of this here TV set two it's kicking off my series on connected TV the future of TV watching what is TV watching all about what's it going to be like in the future or people even going to call it TV watching anymore way back 80 or 90 years ago when I was a kid we had a TV set in the living room it had an antenna actually was kind of a two antenna setup telescoping you pulled it out like this see like this at a lot of practice and if we had it in the right spot and I move the antenna the right way we got I think five channels we got the three major networks because back then there was no Fox we got PBS and the fifth channel was the local independent Channel that showed like wrestling and old cartoons on Saturday mornings that kind of stuff nowadays a lot of people have cable or satellite in their homes you can get all kinds of internet TV Hulu and iTunes content you can get a Vudu and Amazon video on-demand all that kind of stuff you can get Netflix both streaming and through the mail you can rent videos you know all manner stuff you can get mobile TV on your smartphone and your tablet computer and TV in your car and the list just goes on and on so what's the deal with TV these days what are people actually doing what are some of the ways that you can get all the different options hardware and software how can you use your computer or your smartphone or other devices you might already have to get TV content at home and on the go and you know what's the best way to watch whatever it is whether it's pro wrestling old cartoons reruns of freaks and geeks or you know whatever it is you want to watch what's the best way to do it so we're going to kick things off with a look at this your TV set it's a vizio it's a 22 inch TV it's got vizio z' Vizio internet apps they call it which are connected apps that let you do everything from update your Twitter status to watch streaming Netflix on-demand through the TV set through Wi-Fi or Internet and I'll tell you what I learned the hard way that being laid up in bed for half of one day and all day the next day we cold is probably the best way to get a thorough review experience with a connected TV set because all I did was play with this thing for about 36 hours so enough out of me onto the review let's fire it up alright so like I said this is a 22 inch model from Vizio I'll put the model number down in the subtitles it's an LED set it's 1080p although at this size 22 inches you know 1080p unless you're up close you're using it as a computer monitor you know uh the 1080p thing is really going to help you all that much here I'm firing it up it's funny to have to boot a TV set up but you know that's the deal with that with these things these days got the sound on right now gosh you got a hooked up to these external speakers I'll get to more on that in a second it's 22 inch 1080p LED backlit on the edges only it's part of the razor series so it's ultra thin I'll show you that in a second this TV I actually purchased this was not a um not a review loaner but I actually bought this over the holidays it was on sale I picked it up for $200 plus shipping uh the same place where I got it now has it for 270 not on sale prices seem to be between 250 and 300 although I'm seeing them on eBay for the $200 mark or lower so there you go got here to show you real quick not going to a full unboxing or anything like that but here's the remote it's got your basic remote controls plus it's got the transport controls for watching the streaming video and stuff it's got the via button for Vizio internet apps and then your standard you know keypad layout all that kind of stuff the TV came with a special panel you have to use if you want to mount the TV to the wall which is kind of a drag because you can't flush mount the TV which you know you should be able to for TV this thin came with the remote with batteries came with a couple of cables and there you go highlights of the TV set obviously the apps we're going to get to in a second it's got 802 11 ny5 built in they're calling it HD Wi-Fi which is pretty funny it's also got an at port built in a couple HDMI inputs a couple other inputs and then analog and digital audio out now the audio out is actually a big deal because the speakers on this thing are terrible the sound is just absolutely awful you can see actually the speaker's off right now so I've actually got my cable box hooked up directly to these external speakers so you're not going to hear the sound this is a espn2 obviously coming through the cable box I'll show you or I guess listen you what the sound sounds like using one of the disturbing audio apps but the speakers are just pretty bad you know on a set that's this thin and at this price point you're not going to expect a whole lot you know there's certainly passable for just listening and TV but I think you're really going to want to hook this up to external speakers home theater system something if you're planning on using it okay so what we're here for really you know kind of in a nutshell the picture quality is pretty good the colors are pretty good for the on the set it's only LED backlight or edge backlighting but again it's a 22 inch set so you're not really going to notice it that much the size of the set is nice I don't like this standby light when the TV is off the standby light the Vizio logo glows this kind of gold brown color you know the whole time waltz off which I don't really like and it's sort of odd having a TV set that has to boot up the boot up time isn't all that long but the TV's actually crashed crashed twice on me it's basically a computer you know it's basically like a limited functionality you know Home Media Center computer built in here so once the thing just totally crashed and the light was blinking on and off and then it rebooted itself the other time the remote just wouldn't do anything so to crashes so far also one firmware update that had to be installed which added some functionality and one of the notable things that made the Netflix app much nicer which is pretty cool but just kind of funny to have a TV set you know that that that crashes and needs firmware updates and such um and there is kind of a I don't saying on a lot I apologize I'm aware of that believe me having the software baked into the TV set very convenient but you do you know run the possibility of if the software just totally malfunctions then you can't watch TV till you get it fixed you want to add more fun shonali if this you know TV doesn't support it then what do you do that kind of thing their answers to all the problems but something to consider so we'll take a look at the apps down here on the bottom and we'll start off with where this thing actually starts off when you load it up so the HDTV settings we cookie went through ups guess we hit the run blender quickly run through here these are just your settings for the set you know assigning your inputs wide screen mode closed captioning all that kind of stuff one thing to mention on the audio panel there's a setting for lip-sync in my experience this hasn't done very much so we'll leave it at that I had some issues with lip synching on Netflix I'll get to in a minute that did not help there's actually equalizer settings which on the one hand is pretty cool on the other hand with these speakers didn't do a darn bit of good but I guess if you were outputting to you know a home theater system or external speakers could come in handy I mean they are I when I when I ran it through the external speakers they did help you know was noticeable and if you're using the Rap City app to stream audio I could see where that could be helpful otherwise you've got your basic settings here or sleep time or all that kind of stuff network capabilities like I said 802 11 n Wi-Fi built-in as well as on Ethernet jack in the back I've been using the Wi-Fi only I have a pretty fast I mean a decently fast cable modem connection and just a I don't even have an N Wi-Fi network setup right now this is running on a you know - 11 G Network and I vent at any trouble streaming video streaming 1080p video from Vudu anything like that I got to get one of those designs shaped into my head alright we'll go back and take a look at some of the other apps there's a Flickr app you can look at Flickr photos I don't even know I have anything in my I have some stuff in my photo stream here these are all Yahoo TV widgets and so to get into these widgets some of them you don't have to sign into but the Yahoo related ones like Flickr you have to sign in with a yahoo ID so here's some of the photos in my Flickr stream we don't need to go into those but basic you know Flickr functionality you can explore different people sets that kind of stuff look through the contacts in your groups so you know pretty neat stuff if you're into Flickr ah we'll go back here and there's not an easy way actually I'm sure there is I've actually had a little bit of a problem there we go hit the menu button get us back to the widgets Yahoo News if you're into doing that Rhapsody come to the free trial or you can stream your Rhapsody music through there's a Facebook widget which I'm not going to go into all the widgets here but some of the popular ones Facebook the Facebook widget is actually pretty good I don't know why you'd want to deal with Facebook and Twitter on your TV set personally I think most of people who want to use something like this on a TV are going to have a smartphone or another device around that it makes more sense on because when you now that content I don't know it's on TV but I don't know if that's appropriate for our eye for our audience here so there's my there's my wall and if I want to enter a status update one of the drawbacks here is that I have to use the virtual QWERTY board and click through on the remote to enter things in so if I want to enter the quick brown fox and jumped over the lazy sheepdog you know I'm going to have to do a whole lot of clicking and I might get blackberry thumb by the time I'm done so for reading you know your Facebook wall or your Twitter stream or whatever you know kind of handy I guess if you're into that whole thing but for entering text I I don't see you know the value in it personally that's why Cordia remotes are becoming more popular here's the Netflix app and this was actually one of the main reasons that I was interested in this set the TV Guide is just kind of a view engaño guide built in that's going to be more useful for you Yahoo Finance there's some other Yahoo widgets we'll talk about those a little more the Netflix app is one of the reasons that I was most interested in this set and the Netflix app actually works quite well and with the update after I installed the firmware update on the set the newer version of the Netflix app is actually really handy because it lets you not only stream stuff from your instant queue but you can actually search you