VIZIO VBR231 Blu-Ray Player with Wireless Internet Application, Black

 (66 customer reviews)

I love Vizio products and just bought a 42 inch LCD flat panel which I am quite happy with. Needless to say, I was looking forward to purchasing the Vizio 231 blu-ray player expecting the same level of quality. On the outside the VBR231 is gorgeous and well styled and designed. Everything is perfect. However, the blu-ray player has 3 major flaws that cannot be overlooked.

Firstly, this model cannot stay connected to the internet. So once you log off any internet app, you have to go thru the entire reconnection process using setup all over again. This gets tiresome after about 3 times. Tech support has confirmed with me that this model cannot stay connected with internet unlike their other blu-ray models. No explanation as to why.

Secondly, because the blu-ray player cannot stay connected to the internet, every time you turn it on, it tries to reconnect to the internet on its own. It never succeeds but these means you have to wait to use it for up to 5 minutes...Read more

I purchased this unit at Costco (paying about $20 more than Amazon.com currently charges) in November 2010, after a standard DVD player used with a 42" HDTV (also Vizio) broke. At that time, I knew almost nothing about internet apps, and went to the store thinking I would simply buy a stand-alone BluRay player. To my surprise, none of the BluRay units sold at Costco were stand-alone: all were either WiFi-ready or had integrated WiFi. At $140, the VBR231 was the lowest-priced unit with full integrated WiFi. There were less costly units that were ethernet-net ready, but my tv location is not hard-wired for internet.

I experienced the same problem with internet connectivity as others have posted: it was not automatic and had to be manually configured each time I turned on the set. Tech support was unable to solve the problem, but I solved it myself by accident, earlier this month.

My wireless router (not dual-band, and it was already in place before buying this...Read more

I just bought this at Costco.

It wasn't hard to set up but there is no display on the actual unit so you can't quickly see how much time you've watched, the buttons on the remote are hard to press and don't always take and there is no manual in the box (you need to go online and download a 28 page manual). In addition, I'm not savvy enough to be able to reprogram it every time it loses Internet connectivity so it's going back.