By 
While we’re not quite sure why they are still calling it a pre-order after an initial batch of Co-Star units hit doorsteps last month, but Vizio is once again listing their Google TV box for sale on their site. The $99 Co-Star is about as cheap a pathway to Google TV as you will find, so it’s no surprise that the company has had trouble keeping up with demand. While we have no way of knowing exactly how many units Vizio has pushed, since the GTV device has seen its status go from pre-order to unavailable and back several times in the past month.
New units are shipping on the 17th of this month, so orders should arrive in a little over a week. Just remember: the Co-Star is only available from Vizio’s site, so if you want one you will want to head over and put down a reservation now.
Update: If you didn’t act quick, you missed your chance to pick up the Co-Star for now. The GTV box is once again listed as out of stock shortly after Vizio’s site began accepting pre-orders once again. We’ll keep an eye on the buy page and let you know when more units are back in stock.
[via Vizio | Thanks, Jeremy!]
I wonder if the remote can be used for a universal remote replacement?
could somebody please post a link to a good vizio co-star review which includes the review of an actual received unit, and rate on ease of use, intuitive navigation, availability of google play store, if the chrome web browser is available, what version of android is it on? if version is less than 4.1 is adobe flash compatible? internal memory? etcetera…
I got one on day one. It was 10 minutes to set up, another 20 minutes downloading latest updates. The instructions are really good if you actually read them and follow them. If not, it might take you a day to get your sea legs with the device. I don’t read instructions ;-). They have a widget board that baffled me, but I figured out that you can overlay widgets on the TV. Clock, twitter feed, etc. might be interesting.
Remote is the best remote I’ve ever bought for $99. Works very well for what it does. Controls Vizio box via Bluetooth, AT&T Uverse box via IR, TV via IR. There’s no IR patch cable coming from the Vizio box. The remote knows from what context you’re in whether commands should be sent to TV, Vizio box, or cable box. Very intuitive. The mouse pad on it leaves a lot to be desired. It;s slightly better than my Acer netbook, which isn’t saying much.
The overwhelmingly huge value of this thing is the guide. Most cable boxes have a guide by channel and time. Google’s is by interest, so it finds you shows on right now or soon that you will like. The other is the YouTube app. Finally actually fun to sit around the TV and watch YouTube videos with other people. Always felt it was a chore with other devices.
It’s still running Honeycomb. Chrome is on it, and really good for what it does. I actually use it for testing web applications that might be meant for display systems. This little box might save $100-$200 in a lower end deployment and have additional possibilities.
Not sure about Flash. Flash in the browser is out of Google’s and Adobe’s long term plans for Android.
P.S. Yes, it has Flash in Chrome. I just realized that I use a flash website to listen to sports radio in the mornings on that TV.
you may be experiencing HTML5 at work without having realized it.
would you recommend it to someone who has no traditional cable television subscription and would use it only for browsing the web, using the gmail app, and possibly hulu app or netflix app? also, is there a lag between remote button presses and the action on the screen?
The browser is clumsy and slow, so I would not recommend it. But that isn’t specific to this unit, it is just the default Chrome browser (Which I use exclusively on my PC and phone) in general that is used
the chrome browser is really fast, so i’m not sure what you are referring to
For browsing for browsing’s sake, I like my laptop. If I wanna look something up of have Yahoo! Sports box scores open, the Co-star works great for that. I’m not much of a Hulu and Netflix guy. The apps looks more than serviceable. The YouTube app is really cool though. They went all out to make that something fun to do from the couch.
no sound output.
@brad : can it play local media from USB, DLNA or NAS? (This is a critical requirement for my environment!) Thx!
USB, yes. The Google Play Music app does a great job. If your NAS has a web interface, yes (through Chrome). The specs say yes on DLNA, although I haven’t actually tried it yet. Much as I want to geek out on this thing, I just haven’t had the time. But I find it more than occasionally useful while watching TV. Brought the Yahoo Sports box score up during the Broncos/Steelers game last night and switched to that occasionally to see Manning’s numbers. It’s three button taps from live TV to an adjacent running app on the app carousel, and one tap back to live TV.
Pre-orders back again, 9/24 ship date now.
Just placed an order, when placing it, it had a shipping date of 09/24, when completed the order now says On Hold
I don’t know what the author is talking about, Visio is still accepting pre-orders as of 1:36 Central time.
Heyyyyy….I ordered mine right now and the site worked. Go ahead and buy.
I just ordered one at 4:37 EDT.
I want one but am hesitant. Only 4GB of memory and no sd slot? Depending on the size of apps, you’d probably run out of room real fast. I’d probably try to use this for games a lot and some games are huge.
just ordered 2 on accident, dont think im gonna keep both, 6:00 central time, chicago. just an FYI for anybody looking to order, keep checking back occasionally and its about $120 plus sum change after tax and shipping.
@ JROMEO parts 1-2-3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paTW4lXZRdk&feature=plcp
I got one with the 1st phase of shippments. I was really pissed to find out that Google themselves haven’t even created a “Play Movies and TV” app, so the shows I bought through the play store, I can’t even play on my TV. I just sold mine for a $10 profit on ebay.
If Google isn’t going to support their own product, then I am not either.
By the way, the other problem was, is that this unit goes into a sleep mode that doesn’t allow video/audio from my DTV box, to pass, and requires that I actually shut it down and restart it, to get my DTV picture to pass through.
That, and the remote starts getting really flaky any more than 10-12′ away, which is how far my couch and TV are separated