Vizio Wins Round One of the Internet Enabled TV Releases

Missed from our earlier round up of Internet enabled television releases at CES was details from budget TV maker Vizio, which isn’t bad because they actually deserve a post by itself.

Vizio, for those not familiar this brand is a budget LCD TV maker that sells primarily in the United States, with some availability in Canada and Japan. It’s also remarkably the largest seller of LCD’s in the United States, ahead of Samsung.

So can a budget TV maker compete with the big guns in internet enabled televisions? In this case, they not only compete they kill.

Here’s the specs.

entertainment, information and social networking content into the viewer’s living room. With unprecedented choice and control of web-based and local content from a wide range of popular content providers and services, including on-demand movies and music, news, weather, sports, gaming and social networking services,

Video
Comes with Amazon, Blockbuster and Netflix video on demand. In negotiations with Hulu for streaming. So not one like many of the others, but all the three major players.

Music
Pandora and Rhapsody, plus support for the Intel Yahoo widget platform

Games
Access to Accedo Broadband’s Funspot service delivering games including Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Sudoku, and QuizzMaster.

Extras
Flickr support naturally, but here’s the big one: support for Adobe Flash Lite, so developers can build on Flash as well. Widgets in development include CBS, Showtime, Twitter, The New York Times and MySpace.

But Wait, There’s More: a remote with built in Qwerty Keyboard, and it runs on Bluetooth. Very nice along side the 802.11n WiFi.

According to Gizmodo (also image credit) the line up will start in two TVs this fall, eventually expanding to Vizio’s entire XVT line.

Cheap televisions with kick ass internet access. WIN. Now if only they’d make PAL versions so I could import one.