Vizio VBR122

Vizio VBR122

If you're looking for a bargain-priced Blu-ray player, the Vizio VBR122 makes an excellent choice. For $110 (as of November 3, 2011), you get very good image quality and a large selection of streaming Internet services. You also get a nifty remote control that becomes a QWERTY keyboard when you flip it over. As television accessories become more Internet-oriented, users are finding themselves having to enter text--usually passwords and search terms--into them. A conventional remote control gives you only number and arrow buttons for handling this job, making it an annoying chore. Remote-control phone apps offer an option, but they're not a cure-all. I vastly prefer the VBR122's solution: a two-sided remote. On one side, it's a conventional remote control. Turn it over, though, and you have a QWERTY keyboard. This simple, clean approach works in situations where remote-control apps on a smartphone can't do the job (such as for Wi-Fi passwords and Netflix searches). Vizio doesn't provide iOS or Android remote-control apps--but with this keyboard, you don't need them.