Customer Reviews

VIZIO VBR100 Full HD Blu-ray Player

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I bought one of this when they first came out early last fall from a large discount store. I was really impressed as I unboxed it - it looked very nice and had a nice "hefty" feel to the case (unlike so many other players). I hooked it up to a 37" Vizio 1080p TV. The Blu-Ray quality was decent - nothing to write home about though. While it was better than an upconverted DVD of course, it didn't have the crispness to the image that I was expecting. I ran about three recent movies through it and all had the same result - good enough, but not great. Then I tried upconverting standard DVDs. That's where it really fell down. The image quality was much worse than my upconverting DVD player. No depth, fuzzy, stuttering in fast motion. Other disappointments were the weak sound quality with both DVDs and Blu-Rays and a very short range for the remote. I literally had to be in front of the player to activate it. The DVD player or TV had no issue with the same angle. All in all a weak effort from Vizio (and it went back).

Black Friday I grabbed a Toshiba BDX-2000 from Amazon. It has more or less the same specs as the Vizio but its performance is like night and day better. Sharper Blu-Ray, better upconverting (still not as good as my DVD player though), much better sound and greater remote range. I thought maybe I was being too harsh on the Vizio, but after having the Tosh for a few weeks I can see that I wasn't.

Purchased this unit as my first BluRay player after waiting more than 2 years to purchase one due to the BluRay/HD battle and general lack of stability in the hardware and playback quality of existing units. I'll keep this short. The VBR100 has performed flawlessly for me. I've watched 6 BluRay movies thus far, including Australia and a concert video by the band Rush (Snakes & Arrows - MUST HAVE for you Rush fans!). No problems whatsover. The 6 BluRay discs I've tried all loaded up in less than a minute. I've seen other units over the years take 2-3 minutes, which is just ridiculous. Like the prior reviewer, I actually bought mine at WalMart too since it was cheaper than Amazon's price. I've since done a firmware upgrade, which was a piece of cake. Highly recommended!

If you are a hardware manufacturer that wants to capture market share based on pricing you have to take advantage of your own lower pricing while you can because your competition normally won't want to let you keep that advantage very long. Eventually those competitors will drop their pricing into the same area you've targetted and that competitive advantage will be gone as customers opt to up sell themselves on competing products with better features, better reputations, etc.

Such is the problem that would seem to be facing Vizio with their 'entry level' VBR100 Blu-ray player. Well, that problem and a few others as well. Read on for a run-down of my thoughts about the player (at least the thoughts that I had at the time I wrote this review, early October 2009).

First, I'll about guarantee that these players will drop in price, just like their competition, over the not so distant future. For one, a price drop is guaranteed since I just bought myself one of these players a few weeks ago. No, sorry, not purchased through this particular web site, as a local mart that is loaded (wall to Wal) had the best pricing for the product and offered instant gratification if I wanted to pick up the product in store. As I did want the product in hand asap, I opted to buy in store rather than mail order, so I was able to take the device home the same day and start setting it up.

Setup was fairly simple, but I would note that the box doesn't have an HDMI cable in it, nor does it have a Component video cable. Nope, there was a composite video cable (Yellow connector with the Red and White audio cables tied in) but if that cable is used the video output quality suffers as NO upscaling is done unless the connection is HDMI or Component. Considering how inexpensive HDMI cables are, it would have been nice if Vizio had included an HDMI cable in the box. At most, I'd expect the inclusion of such a cable to add a few dollars in cost per unit, even if you factor in additional shipping weight on pallets of boxes. It seems that in this area Vizio has gone instead for keeping their own costs low. Granted, many people might not be able to use HDMI anyway, or they might prefer to buy the cable separately so they get the right length or a better quality cable, etc., but it still seems silly not to have the cable in the box.

On the other hand, I have to admit that HDMI cables is one area that the big box stores love to gouge customers on when selling them HD gear. Consider the costs of buying a cable here at Amazon versus buying a cable that you would find at one of those so-called Best places to Buy from, or one of those marts of Wal's, and you realize quickly that you can easily pay a small fortune for an HDMI cable with little or no difference at all in the audio/video quality of the end product no matter which cable you use.

Some cable manufacturers will tout their own specifications and claim that their cables are capable of carrying more data or something like that, but there's no real difference, or at least not one that justifies paying 4 to 25 times more for the cables.

Sorry about that detour about cables and such, and admittedly, I must say that the lack of inclusion of the HDMI cable in the box is something that many other competing products has the same problems with. Just about all of the products in this category would have that problem.

The VBR100 player is a decent player but not without some nits to pick. First, it claims BD Live compatibility. Well, sure, but only if the user adds (their own, not included) USB memory stick to the unit. If you don't add a USB flash drive with 1GB or more of RAM to the unit and properly set the unit up to use that stick for BD Live then you'll never get BD Live working on the unit even if you hook the unit up to your own WIRED network.

That's another of the potential problem for this product -- wired networking only. Sorry, no wireless network built-in. It's nice that the unit has a network connection available, but many customers may find that they don't want to hassle with pulling a network cable to a location by their HDTV equipment. You can add a wireless bridge or power line adapter to your network (perhaps), but that makes the cost of using this unit considerably more expensive and puts the price into the neighborhood where you'd find the LG BD390 Wi-Fi Network Blu-ray Disc Player or even the PlayStation 3 120 GB. On the other side, if you don't need/want BD Live features, then you don't need to hook up to the network at all -- not even for firmware updates.

Firmware updates are something that anyone using a Blu-ray player will be familiar with, as the never-ending security and content protection schemes and other 'features' of Blu-ray discs may require that you update the firmware on your player. In this area the lack of ability to upgrade the unit's firmware over the wired network is a mixed blessing, though I prefer to label it primarily a failure (especially when compared to the PS3, as an example). Going back to the HD DVD players, I had a Toshiba HD-A3 720p/1080i HD DVD Player that I used (and liked) and found it very easy to upgrade firmware on. Simply use the menu option and off you went checking for, downloading, and then applying the downloaded firmware. Alternatively you could download the firmware to a memory stick or to your computer and create a 'firmware update disc' and be all set to upgrade the firmware with that. This last method is basically what Vizio is doing with the VBR100. Customers will have to download the firmware to their computer and then create a CD that contains the firmware. That process isn't too difficult, but it is an added burden for customers. I suppose, though haven't yet experienced this, that Vizio may mail out firmware discs to customers so that the customers don't have to create their own. I doubt that will happen though as doing that would add support costs that would eventually become too expensive. (They may make the firmware available for some small 'support fee' or something like that, but again, I know of no current plans for this to happen.)

Upgrading the firmware to the most current version, once downloaded, is a fairly simple process and only takes a few minutes, if that. If there is a problem, the system is smart enough to detect that the firmware on the disc is not good and the unit will automatically revert back to the last firmware version so you don't break the unit by failing to complete an upgrade.

Owners of Vizio TV's get an added benefit from these units in that the remote control will also control the volume for the TV, but otherwise the remote control that is included is for control of the VBR100 and not for controlling other devices. Owners of other TV brands are out of luck, as are owners of home theatre sound systems. (Sorry, you'd need to continue to use your own remotes for those products, or buy a Logitech Harmony or similar product.) The remote control is ok, though seems to be sluggish in responsiveness at times, and/or seems to have to be 'aimed' at the unit much more than should be needed. It is possible that Vizio's design for the unit is to fault, with the shiny black face filtering out more of the infrared remote control signal than Vizio expected. Whatever the issue is, the responsiveness of the remote is somewhat lacking.

The face of the unit is, as noted directly above, a shiny black plastic. There are no buttons on top of the unit, nor for that matter even on the face of the unit. There are instead touch sensitive areas that are used to control the unit. The 'power button' area is marked, but not terribly easy to see when the unit is powered off, and most users will likely be looking for the remote control to turn the unit on or off with. Once the unit is powered on the other touch sensitive areas light up brightly enough that they are easy to find and make use of. Additionally, when the unit is powered on the Vizio logo will be lit as well as the unit having a blue light bar above the drive tray that lights up to let you know that a disc is loaded in the drive. When the unit is powered off the Vizio logo turns orange, though the color is a bit different than the muddy orange that is used for the logo on Vizio TV's.

Getting back to the use of USB Flash drives on the unit, users are not limited to just using such drives for BD Live storage. Users may play content directly from a connected USB Flash drive if they wish, though using a drive for such purposes opens up another apparent design flaw: the location of the USB port (which is on the back of the unit). Given the mixed use for the USB port that port should have been located on the front of the unit. Certainly users can buy their own USB extension cables, but that shouldn't be necessary and again adds costs to the unit that shouldn't be there. If the port had been located on the front of the unit instead it would be very easy to swap flash drives on the unit at any time.

One last comment about the use of the USB flash drives -- if you wish to use the drive for BD Live support you must run the unit without a disc in the drive (or with the drive bay open) then select USB, and finally select the option for BD Live where you tell the unit that you want the flash drive used for such purposes. If you don't do that you'll never get BD Live working as you have no storage for BD Live purposes. That information can be found in the manual (somewhere), but for those that never read manuals, the entire process could be more intuitive and/or simpler.

Whew, finally on to performance of the unit.

First, load times are not terribly impressive, though not out of line with the load times with other units on the market. Any time you feed the unit a disc expect it to take a few seconds to load and get to the menu. Longer on some titles, shorter on others, depending on the complexity of the menus, etc. While loading to the menu the unit seems to make a fair amount of noise, but once the disc is playing the drive is not loud enough to notice.

The video quality on the unit is good, including the upconversion capabilities. I've fed the unit a few DVDs and noticed fairly impressive picture quality, despite knowing that I'm using standard definition DVD and not Blu-ray. Blu-ray picture quality is as expected.

If you are looking for a Blu-ray player for your home and you have a Vizio TV this would make a nice companion to that TV. If you are using another TV and aren't using a home theatre sound system (working on a tighter budget), this is still a decent player, though you may find competing products offer more/better features at a very competitive price. If you are looking for a higher end product then I'd expect you never read this far, if you even found the Vizio player at all.

Worth a purchase, though educate yourself before buying and check competing products for feature sets and/or price.

This is a great product, however make sure your firmware is up to date. I ran into a few problems with my newest blurays.

I purchased this Blu Ray Player at Walmart. I was very easy to set up and had nice feature BUT that's where the good stops. During the playing of the first Blu Ray disk, the picture froze. I couldn't fast forward, stop, rewind...nothing. I could not even eject the disk. After calling the company and learning how to get my disk out I took the unit back for an exchange. Walmart gladly exchanged the unit for another and guess what...same thing. About half way into my movie the picture froze. I took back and returned for an LG player. No problems with my LG unit. No more Vizio crap!

In preparing to buy a Bluray player, I read literally thousands of reviews, and what I learned is this: 1)EVERY manufacturer/model in the new lower price range has nay-sayers for various reasons 2)the number of reviews for each player I researched that indicated that they had to return the unit led me to want to purchase one nearby so I wouldn't have to drive far and/or ship it for repair/exchange 3)many players are very slow to load and/or noisy operating 4)many players' reviews indicated horror stories involving firmware updates 5)there are many different permutations of ancilliary functions (connecting to internet, receiving netflix, etc.) which I have absolutely no interest in, but if you are DO YOUR RESEARCH! I was interested in a player that did a great job upgrading my voluminous dvd collection, played efficiently, and plays European/PAL format dvds (which I have a few of). Walmart was THE only place in my area that had a selection of more than one player (and their prices were almost HALF of what privately-owned stores were charging). Out of all the players WM had connected to test, ONLY the Vizio played my test PAL dvd (a Marduk concert, much to the great chagrin of WM's staff and clientele!). I also got the unit for $20 less due to an old advertising sign that was still up at the display. As other reviews have stated, the set up is incredibly simple. I was happy that the unit, like my in-store test, loaded AS QUICKLY AS MY PAST DVD PLAYERS. The unit iself looks real space-age cool, with a touchscreen functionality that is lit when power is on, and totally black when off (except for the Vizio logo which glows orange when unit is off, and white when on). I played some recent dvds (one cannot expect older dvds, or ones whose source material is older, to look pristine even when upgraded...however, I can see a marked difference in most of my dvds, even many ancient Euro-horror selections) and the picture was way more fantastic than I expected. In fact, the picture on actual bluray discs is only about 15% better (whereas the upgrading from my old dvd player to bluray player's dvd quality was anywhere from 30-50%increase in quality, depending on the disc). SO I am very happy with the way this enhances my dvd library! Another unexpected bonus is that I really believe this plays my music cds at a higher quality sound level, even though it is connected exactly the same way to the exact (very retro and loud) stereo system as my old dvd player was. This unit has played everything I've thrown at it (burned cds, dvds, etc,...with the surprising exception of number one in the following...Now, the NEGATIVES: all very minor, EXCEPT 1)that this unit does NOT play the PAL format dvd picture, only the sound; this is perplexing because in-store it played both. I imagine there is some sort of code or something I'll have to look for (naturally Walmart's staff is baffled!). 2)remote must be pointed very directly at unit. 3)SOME functions take a wee bit longer than normal dvd to kick in, but not terribly so (it'll just take a bit of getting used to) 4)noise level is high when first loading, then MOSTLY quiet while playing, though there is at seemingly regular intervals an internal machine "shifting" noise that is audible only if the film is at a quiet moment. 5)VERY minor problem is during bluray playback, some "panoramic vista" scenes (desert landscapes, or anything with wide open ground and sky) there is a slight "shimmer" or "wavering" in large expanses of the same colour/texture. and, if you're really picky, 6)doesn't come with HDMI cable (WARNING: do NOT buy HDMI at a retail store, most of them sell low-end cables STARTING at around $25, going up with the name brands. Order one off Amazon, you can get similar low-end cables starting at ONE CENT + shipping!...you can get really good ones for around $10). SO, my conclusion is this: if you're just a regular person who wants to watch blurays and upgrade your dvd library to near-bluray quality, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this unit. In fact, the upgrading is so excellent that unless a film is heavy on special effects/action/spectacular cinematography, I'll probably just get the dvd version instead of the bluray! VERY satisfied.

We purchased our Vizio VBR100 direct from Amazon. We were surprised how quickly the Amazon store shipped. The set-up was rather simple. It was nice to have matching component with Vizio 32 inch LCD. We have the 720 resolution tv; not knowing Blue ray would shortly be part of our home entertainment system. We are already looking at 1080 resolution 37 or 42 LCD. Another Amazon purchase???

The pros of Blue Ray. Regular DVDs upgrade to TV resolution in our case 720. HDMI who invented this technology?? We only have two cables plugged into our TV. HDMI for HD Cable and HDMI cable for Blue ray player. We are also thinking about getting a dolby stereo with HDMI technology. Only three HDMI cables and a couple speaker wires? Sounds pretty simple,doesn't it??
Blue ray discs are great! We still need to try our BD live feature. I am now curious about updating the firmware. Vizio player picture quality? I have to be biased because I own a Vizio television.

The cons? The cons are few. Vizio needs to bring back its Vizio universal remote. I have to use a separate Vizio remote to change my HDMI selection on my Vizio TV. The setup noise. I almost had a melt down the first time I powered up the unit. I thought I had a broken player. No, its just plain noisy,during power up. Once you load the disc it purrs like a new born kitten. Start up time is slow when playing non-blue ray discs. Blue rays load up rather quickly.

Blue ray technology is going to remain hopefully a long time? The motion picture companies are slowly making new releases affordable. You can get a catalog selection of long time favorite list of Blue ray movies for the regular price of most regular dvds.

Closing statement: I have unplugged my long lived and still living dvd player from a competitive manufacture. I have a young family and a tight budget for diapers and formula. Vizio home entertainment, keeps a smile on dad's face.

Had this player for a while, I could tolerate the connectivity delays and the inability to hit a reconnect button when the internet dropped, could tolerate the remote that you had to point carefully at the thing, but I cannot tolerate the fact that I bought 3 BluRay DVDS and all it does is make a grinding sound for a minute and then it spits them back out. Customr service said, "our player has some incompatibility issues with certain bluray DVDs". Certain...based upon my research the list is longer than those it will play. Your money would be better spent elsewhere, they won't take it back, and it is just an overpriced DVD player with internet capability. (Oh and no plans to fix the firmware to make it play bluray disks either) I know, I am probably expecting too much for a bluray player to actually play bluray disks. VIZIO fails to meet expectations.

Price performance excellent.
Set up was easy.
It worked the first time we plugged it in.

Bought this player January of this year. Last night (July 10) while playing a DVD the picture just froze. I've had situations before where playing would hesitate and them jerkily resume after a few seconds, but this time nothing after minutes. I tried cleaning the disc (which visibly looked clean) with window cleaner, but the reinserted disc then failed to load and ejected automatically after a minute. Known good and recently played DVDs and Blue Rays subsequently then failed similarly. I don't buy the possibility that all my discs went suddenly bad, dirty and/or incompatible. After six months service the played just dropped dead. Nothing lasts forever, but I expect better reliability than this.