![]() ![]() A TV should be focused on rendering video in the most perfect way possible." That is not something a television hanging on a wall ten feet away from you will ever be. "A handheld device has proven to be an extraordinarily adept navigation device, and it has become an extraordinarily personalized experience. "The mental and strategic leap is breaking up navigation and consumption," he says. The company could have picked any number of other smart TV solutions - including Google’s own Android TV - but McRae wanted to do something more radical: try and reset the entire model of how people interact with the screens in their lives. McRae proudly says it’s the highest in the industry.īut over time, Vizio’s Yahoo-based VIA Apps smart TV platform had become dated the company needed a new platform. The company doesn’t spend a ton on marketing, instead focusing on what it calls the "reco rate," or how likely Vizio owners are to recommend the products to their family and friends. Vizio TVs routinely sit atop the charts at review sites like CNET and The Wirecutter, and the company currently leads in both smart TV and overall TV unit shares over rivals like Samsung and Sony. Yet by designing products in the States and leveraging tight relationships with manufacturing partners like AmTran and Hon Hai to undercut competitors’ pricing, Vizio has come to dominate the US TV market in recent years. It’s also a tiny company, with just about 450 employees. Vizio is a quiet company - most people don’t even realize that it’s based in America, headquartered in Irvine, California. The answer is to get rid of the remote control as a device category. We’ve gone down all those paths and we think they’re all cul-de-sacs. "A better remote control is not the answer," says McRae. None of these ideas have ever cracked the fundamental problem: TVs are for watching things, not doing them. It doesn’t matter if you go all-in on voice search and let people just ask for what they want, like Roku and Amazon and a host of others are doing. It doesn’t matter if you build the world’s sleekest touch remote and ask people to use apps on the screen, like the new Apple TV. It doesn’t matter if you stick a bunch of QWERTY keys on a regular remote to make typing easier, like TiVo and Vizio have each tried. It doesn’t matter if you ship a full-size keyboard with a trackpad, like Sony and Logitech have done in the past. It’s particularly awful if you have to hunt and peck with cursor keys on a regular remote, but no other solution is that much better. ![]() "A better remote control is not the answer." They talk about "leaning back versus leaning forward" and solving "10-foot interface issues" and "replacing input one" and a host of other terms that all revolve around a single problem no one has ever managed to really solve: People have been trying to smash computers and televisions together since the ‘80s, a concept generally called "smart TV." Hang out with people building smart TV interfaces long enough, and you’ll notice an entire language has evolved around it. Vizio chief technology officer Matt McRae "We’re the ones who are going to end it." "The era of having a couple of buttons on a physical remote that sits there and does nothing else is going to end," says McRae, his voice rising. ![]() It's a simple idea with enormous implications: what if all the TVs in your home were just extensions of your phone? There’s also an iOS version of the app, and any other app or service that supports Cast can send content to the TV. The P-Series comes with a six-inch Android tablet, and everything is controlled by the new Vizio SmartCast app. Instead, Vizio has partnered with Google to redesign the entire TV experience around the Google Cast streaming protocol, the same technology used in the wildly popular Chromecast streaming stick. ![]() Unlike the smart TVs that dominate the market, the P-Series completely lacks an on-screen interface - there are no apps or menus or controls or even picture settings on the TV itself. Vizio’s new P-Series TVs are a radical departure from the rest of the industry. That needs to be dynamited." What if all the TVs in your home were just extensions of your phone?Īnd McRae has dynamite in hand. "We’re navigating from remotes that were invented in the 1950s. "I can’t believe we have rubber buttons and a plastic housing with double-A batteries," he says. And he thinks remote controls are very, very stupid. McRae is the chief technology officer of Vizio, a company that sells more TVs - and with them, remotes - than any other company in America. Or, more specifically, about getting rid of them. Matt McRae is fired up about remote controls. ![]()
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