California-based company Vizio announced Monday its plans to incorporate Netflix onto the next firmware update to the Vizio tablet. The new update will allow members to log into their Netflix account for instant browsing and streaming.

“With an abundance of movies and TV shows to offer, Netflix is the ideal application to pre-load on our VIZO Tablets,” said Vizio Chief Technology Officer Matt McRae in the press release.

The 8-inch Vizio tablet, however, does not currently include models with 3G or 4G support, so the streaming will only be available where WiFi hotspots are in range. Those who do not have a Netflix account in the U.S. can always subscribe for $7.99 per month. Users will be granted access to the large library of TV and movie programs for streaming currently offered by the service.

Santa Monica, Calif. - Vizio was front and center at the launch of an elaborate new "3D sports bar" called South, here, Thursday night.

The grand opening of the redone bar, which is adorned with Vizio passive-technology-based 3D LCD TVs, drew celebrities and tech gurus who checked out some of the evening's sports action wearing highly styled passive-3D glasses carrying bold Vizio logos.

Like every other Sound+Vision writer, I’ve seen a lot of 3D TV. But I never saw so much 3D TV as I did last night, when I walked into South, Los Angeles’ first 3D sports bar. Everywhere I looked, I could see a Vizio flat-panel TV showing 3D programming—sports mostly, of course, but also games and a couple of Blu-ray Discs. No matter which way I turned, I got a full hit of 3D without having to wait for my glasses to sync with the screen I was viewing. It probably wouldn’t have been practical but for the passive 3D technology used in the Vizio sets.

“With active 3D glasses, you have to sync the glasses every time you look at a different screen,” noted Vizio VP of products John Schindler. The much lower cost of the passive 3D glasses—which don’t have active LCD shutters and don’t require batteries, as active 3D glasses do—makes 3D TV much more practical in a sports bar environment, where the lifetime of the glasses may be inversely proportional to the customer’s beer consumption. “You can even use Real D 3D glasses from a movie theater with these TVs,” Schindler added.

The 2011 NFL season is officially under way, which means one singular thing:  it’s time to re-evaluate the current state of your home entertainment system; get off the fence as to whether or not you need a new HDTV; and cram the biggest possible flat panel into your preferred NFL viewing room of choice.  Sure, there are some that prefer to wait until the Super Bowl to splurge on a new tv, but why limit the joy that a new high def tv brings to a single game, when you can instead be watching it all season long?  My thoughts exactly, which is precisely why I splurged on a new VIZIO 65″ 3D LCD HDTV last month, just in time to get the picture precisely dialed so that I could watch the Packers beat the Saints in the season opener.

Before I go any further, let me officially state that the name of the VIZIO I purchased is nearly as big as the television itself:  it’s called the VIZIO 65″ Class Theater 3D Edge Lit Razor LED LCD HDTV (model XVT3D650SV).  It’s a gargantuan 65″ monster that has a whole slew of technology built into it, including cinema-style 3D technology, built-in 802.11n dual-band wi-fi, VIZIO Internet Apps (including Netflix, Amazon, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Edge lit Razor LED backlighting with Smart Dimming technology, and a whole bunch more (which I’ll discuss shortly).  But to get straight to the point, after owning it for a month, I can tell you the VIZIO 3D Edge Lit Razor LED LCD HDTV is the best value on the planet right now if you’re looking to make the switch to a big LCD 3D tv, with current Amazon.com pricing coming in just under $2,500.  It has a fantastic picture, it’s loaded with features, and it’s huge.

The folks over at VIZIO have been busy. Just last week, the VIZIO Tablet received a major firmware upgrade giving it improved graphics performance and battery life, along with a host of other upgrades. Now the company has announced that the VIZIO 8" Tablet with Wi-Fi supports ooVoo, allowing VIZIO Tablet owners to video chat – for free - with up to six callers at once.

All you'll need is your VIZIO Tablet, a Wi-Fi connection, and the ooVoo app (available for free in the Android Market), then you'll be able to party chat to your hearts' content. ooVoo is available across multiple hardware platforms, from mobile devices to PCs, and in addition to free video and voice calls, ooVoo also supports calls through a web browser and can be upgraded to enable calls to landlines as well. 

Vizio just announced today that its new 8" Tablet with Wi-Fi is now supporting ooVoo. For those who don't know, ooVoo is a competitor to Skype and offers video conferencing for up to 6 people at once. That means you can use the new Vizio tablet to call your family and friends - and perhaps all at the same time! The service is available provided you have a WiFi connection and ooVoo is available on a variety of platforms, including Mac, PC, iOS and Android. What makes this compelling is that ooVoo works with desktop units, tablets, iPhones, Android phones, Android tablets and more - so you're locking into a system that's all but ubiquitous to the digital marketplace. It even works to landlines (voice only, of course) so nobody is left out.

Vizio said Tuesday that its new 8" tablet is now offering support for the video calling application known as ooVoo. The app enables up to six people to videoconference through the tablet. 

“Just as consumers are shifting away from linear TV programming towards more video on demand, video calls are also evolving from by-appointment usages to a live, spontaneous social experience,” Matt McRae, Vizio's Chief Technology Officer, said as part of the announcement. 

Vizio has announced that its 8″ Vizio Tablet now supports the ooVoo video chat application that lets up to six participants communicate with audio and video over WiFi. ooVoo is an application that has been out there for a while, but it is not compatible with all Android devices. For instance popular devices like the Motorola Bionic, the HTC Sensation and the Samsung Galaxy S2 are not supported at this point. ooVoo also runs on PC and Mac and all versions are free downloads.

Leave it to the leaner and meaner folks at Vizio -- they have become well-known for breaking the price barrier on great-looking flat-screen TV's, and are now making a similar approach at the burgeoning tablet market. Just as HP was deciding to abandon the format made famous by Apple with its iPad, Vizio steps boldly forward with a sleek, efficient and highly affordable rig -- Amazon currently is advertising them at $289 bucks, the price of a smartphone! But does it perform?

Although Vizio is not focusing its production on the Android smartphone and tablet market, the company recently released its first Android product, the VIZIO 8” Tablet. However, the tablet runs an older version of Android instead of the latest Honeycomb platform, which has yet to make its debut on smaller touchscreen tablets.

Vizio's tablet is powered by Android 2.3.2 Gingerbread operating system and comes with a proprietary V.I.A. Plus user interface.It features an 8-inch LCD capacitive multi-touch display with support for 16 million colors and 1024 x 768 pixels resolution. Both price and specs sheet suggest that this is a budget tablet, but for what it's worth, the manufacturer seems to care a lot how it fares on the market.