VIA Plus: Google TV, Round 2
Google TV may have gotten a rather lackluster response in the Logitech Revue set-top box and Sony's Google TV lineup, but Vizio is working with them to make it the core of Vizio's high-end Smart TV feature set, VIA Plus.
You navigate the VIA Plus menus with a Bluetooth remote, which has a full QWERTY slider keyboard and touchpad, which makes it much easier to browse the Web. While the remote isn't quite ready for prime time, a Vizio rep stated that they intended to add an accelerometer to the remote for better gaming features, and a mic for voice search.
Frankly, the VIA Plus features look solid, but unless they can fix the problems that other Google TV implementations have hit--like content providers blocking all Google TV viewers, and interface viewability issues--they won't be able to hang with the other Smart TV features from LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony.
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