Television manufacturer Vizio today unveiled Viziogram — a feature that lets you share videos and photos from your phone directly to someone who has a Vizio TV. VizioGram will be free for users and is now available via upgrades to the Vizio mobile app, and software on the TV itself.
“The inspiration for Viziogram came from my desire to share the moments with my mom, directly to her living room,” Vizio founder William Wang said in a press release. “I wanted her to be fully immersed in family moments, even from far away. There is no better way to stay connected than to send Viziogram in 4K HDR to her 65-inch Vizio TV so she can be part of the action.”
Vizio showed off Viziogram in a short, embargoed press briefing, and it looked simple enough. Once you’ve established a connection with another Vizio user — they’ll have to explicitly accept an invitation — you’ll be able to share short videos and photos, which will expire after seven days.
Vizio says the connection is end-to-end encrypted, which theoretically means that Vizio itself has no insight into the contents of what you’re sharing. Its press release states that “photos and videos stay private, secure, and visible only to those recipients,” and the company reiterated to Digital Trends that “by design, and absent system maintenance or takedown requests, Viziograms can only be seen by the sender and the recipient who opt in to be friends.” The company also said it has “a formal incident response plan if an illegal image is reported,” and that images aren’t stored on the TV.
Yes, sharing photos with friends and family isn’t as simple as sharing photos with friends and family.
Regardless, Viziogram may well prove to be an easy (if niche) way to share photos and videos with someone who spends more time in front of their Vizio TV than a computer, tablet, or phone. It almost takes you back to the WebTV days of the 1990s — a thin client designed for someone who could work a TV remote but wasn’t likely to dive into a full PC experience. That’s a far cry from how things are nearly 30 years later, but the similarities are there.
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