Vizio 2021 Lineup Lacks ATSC 3.0; Has Much Other Tech
Borrowing a model-year approach from the automotive world, Vizio announced a 2021 lineup Tuesday, which “shipped a little bit late,” a spokesperson told us. The sets don’t support ATSC 3.0; the company is "always evaluating new technologies like ATSC 3.0…
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that might bring value to our customers,” he said, and has no immediate announcements on support. There's much other tech, however, in the products. Vizio is launching its first OLED TVs this fall, it said, along with a matched sound bar with adaptive height speakers that automatically rotate up when Atmos or DTS:X content is detected, said Chief Technology Officer Bill Baxter. It has Bluetooth and a voice assistant input. The company is pushing advanced features for gamers to coincide with releases of the latest PlayStation and Xbox game systems. Vizio’s ProGaming engine has a variable refresh rate and syncs a game's changing frame rate and the TV's refresh rate, said Philip Kim, associate product marketing manager on a call last week. The engine's faster response time and lower input lag let users respond more precisely, he said. Carlos Angulo, director-product marketing, called its HDR10+ strategy part of ensuring consumers don’t have to “degrade their viewing experience because they don’t have a particular format,” just like the company does with voice assistants. Faster processor performance improves the new lineup’s SmartCast streaming platform experience, said Amanda Cross, senior manager-product marketing. Users can navigate more quickly between apps and scroll faster to discover new content, she said. A recent software performance boost is backward compatible and available for all SmartCast TVs back to 2016. SmartCast users can control their TVs with a smartphone app and by voice using Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, said Cross. Apple AirPlay 2 and Chromecast built-in users can stream entertainment from a phone, tablet or laptop to the TV.