Vizio Touts HomeKit Integration in AirPlay-Enabled 2019 Smart TVs
LAS VEGAS -- Vizio previewed its 2019 4K TV lineup offsite at the Vdara Hotel and Spa Monday, putting more focus on quantum dot technology with its Quantum Color designation, and raising peak brightness in its flagship model to 2,900 nits. The company also announced support for Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit in its SmartCast 3.0 smart TV platform.
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It’s another high-profile CES signing for Apple, which doesn’t exhibit at the show. Samsung announced Sunday (see separate story, this issue) AirPlay 2 and iTunes movie and TV show store integration in its 2019 smart TVs. On how Vizio’s news differs from Samsung’s, Jodi Larter, Vizio’s product marketing manager-SmartCast, told us Vizio has HomeKit compatibility so consumers can wirelessly connect their TV to a broader smart home network. A user can tell Siri to play a movie scene and lights will dim, the TV comes on and other related programmed events can occur. Users can remotely control their TV through the Apple Home app, she said.
Vizio is playing Switzerland in SmartCast 3.0, integrating with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, too. In a living room-setting demonstration, Matt Thompson, Vizio director-product management, said Vizio is the first to work with all three voice engines and emphasized Vizio is the “first and only place at CES where you’ll get to see AirPlay and HomeKit on a TV.” SmartCast 3.0 users with an Amazon Echo device and Google Home could use Alexa to turn up the volume and Google Assistant to turn it down.
Thompson demo’d the Google Home Hub as a remote control for the Vizio TV. The device also enables content searches by voice, he showed, summoning Google to play CBS AllAccess. Vizio is working on making the voice experience “snappier,” he said.
Vizio TV owners can use Apple’s mirroring function to cast photos from a smartphone to a TV over AirPlay 2. A representative demo’d cross-interface integration, saying: “Hey, Siri: Play Mission Impossible: Fallout in the living room,” and the movie appeared on screen from the iTunes library and started playing. If the TV had been off, it would have turned on automatically, switched to the correct input and started playing, she said. Users have control of commonly used functions such as volume, pause and fast-forward from the iPhone lock screen, she showed.
SmartCast 3.0, due in Q2 as an automatic update, will also be available on previous generation Vizio TVs with SmartCast Home, said Thompson. All 2019 Vizio smart TVs will be SmartCast 3.0-enabled, giving users access to more than 22 apps and Vizio’s subscription-free WatchFree service offering news, sports, movies, TV shows, viral videos and concerts.
At the high-end of its TV line, Vizio divided the 65- and 75-inch TVs into the P-Series (100 zones local dimming and 1,000 nits peak brightness) and the P-Series Quantum X (480 zones local dimming and up to 2,900 nits peak brightness). The top-end sets measure 80 percent of Rec. 2020 color space, said Carlos Angulo, director-product marketing.
Prices weren’t given for the 2019 lineup that's due to launch in spring. Vizio is also evaluating an 85-inch prototype in the P-Series Quantum X line that could arrive this year. On 8K, Angulo said Vizio continues to evaluate the technology and will update plans “when the time is right.”
The V-Series, a new series for 2019, takes features from Vizio’s E-Series and brings them to the entry, "value," level. Sizes will range 40-75-inches, with some models having up to 60 zones of local dimming and peak brightness of 400 nits. All V-Series models will support HDR 10, Dolby Vision and Hybrid Log Gamma, said Angulo.
The M-Series, ranging 43-65 inches, gets quantum dot technology in all models for 2019, said Angulo. Sets have up to 90 zones local dimming and up to 600-nit peak brightness.