VIZIO Adds Photo-Sharing Function To Its TVs With Launch Of VIZIOgram

VIZIO (NYSE: VZIO) today launched VIZIOgram, an addition to its mobile app and TV operating system that allows people to share high-resolution photos and video from their mobile phone to friends or family who are using the company’s smart televisions.

The VIZIOgram functionality is being installed for free through an automatic update to all of the company’s roughly 21 million connected TVs. People who want to share photos from their iOS or Android phones will need to download the free VIZIO Mobile app, which has also been updated with VIZIOgram functionality.

Both the sender and recipient will need to accept an invitation to share photos with each other, company executives said in a pre-launch briefing. VIZIO founder and CEO William Wang said the inspiration for the new functionality came from wanting to directly share family moments with his mother at home.

“I wanted her to be fully immersed in family moments, even from far away,” Wang said in a release. “There is no better way to stay connected than to send VIZIOgrams in 4K HDR to her 65-inch VIZIO TV so she can be part of the action.”

A single VIZIOgram can include up to 10 still images or a single 70-second-long video, executives said. Images are encrypted from end to end during transmission to keep them private, and appear as a notification on the TV’s home screen.

People who receive a VIZIOgram have 14 days to initially open it, then can continue to view it for 30 days from the date of the upload. The company is looking for ways after a beta testing period ends to allow people to store and save their favorite ‘grams for more than 30 days, said a company spokesperson who emphasized the new functionality’s true value is bringing people together in real time.

The VIZIOgram technology won an Innovation Award in the Software and Mobile Apps category at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show. It marks another notable step toward turning the dumb television screens of a decade ago into a home-based, highly capable messaging megascreen with many of the capabilities of a cell phone if not the mobility.

Wang recounted in a recent Forbes interview the long evolution of smart TVs during his time with VIZIO and even before, when he experimented with smart-screen technology with a previous computer-monitor company in the late 1990s. The internet and WiFi technology weren’t ready back then, but Wang and VIZIO kept trying, selling the market’s first smart TVs in 2010, for a nascent video-streaming market back then that largely was comprised of pioneers Netflix NFLX, YouTube and Hulu.

Over the years since, VIZIO added computer brains, high-capacity wireless, its SmartCast software platform for streaming-video apps, automatic content-recognition capabilities for improved advertising and program recommendations, the WatchFree+ ad-supported free streaming service, and viewing enhancements such as HDR10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, among much else.

Sharing images across a (very tightly defined) social network marks another extension of what TVs have long been known for doing. The Apple TV and iPhones can tap into shared photo libraries, and share specified folders of images or video with specific people. That capability, which is structured differently from VIZIOgram, was also added in recent updates to iOS and TVOS operating systems.

The 20-year-old Vizio is the No. 2 seller of televisions in the United States, and the top seller of soundbars. The company is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and focuses on the U.S. market.

The company also released an explainer video and an example of a use case for the new service here: