Vizio Co-Star is NO-GO.

Part of creating a product is providing proper customer support throughout its life-cycle. A product life-cycle begins with product envisioning, followed by definition, followed by create/build, followed by going to market (which on itself consists of different aspects including customer support).

Vizio has failed to deliver my product. And has failed to make *me* a satisfied customer — after waiting for almost a month for the delivery/return-process to work itself out, they could have sent me the package again, perhaps with rush delivery for all the troubles I have been through. But they claim they cannot do that (I don’t believe them); they should take a lesson from Zappo’s book. Instead they will refund me and I have to reorder. But I won’t reorder. Maybe their Co-Star is a kickass product, maybe it is not; the only way I am reviewing the Co-Star is if they send me one. In the meantime, I will continue using my Android tablet for Netflix streaming and apps on my TV. I will wait for a competing Android TV product, and maybe I will end up buying an Apple TV.

Read more on the comments section.

I will categorize this one under “#FAIL”.

I believe SmartTVs will open new/great opps for content/developers; and this will be especially true when intersecting this w/ Mobile.

So, to begin researching this in more detail, I’ve ordered Vizio’s Co-Star. Based on Google TV (click on the previous hyperlink to see the specs) it has everything needed to play/hack-away.

Crafted by VIZIO’s years of entertainment expertise, Co-Star packs the powerful features of Google TV into a sleek, intuitive interface. Combining live TV, the Web and apps into one experience, it allows you to search and access content from all of them without interrupting your viewing.

Of special interest to me is the combined experience across TV & apps that the Co-Star supports; think about it, your app overlaid on top of the video stream — if this plays out as I hope, this is very, very, very powerful, and is what I’ve been waiting for:

  • Merges live TV, web, and apps into one interface
  • Search across live TV, web and apps – simultaneously
  • Picture-In-Picture – Apps & Live TV

Price: $99 — great price.

So stay tuned; I will report back…

ceo