Walmart in talks to buy TV maker Vizio for more than $2B | Hacker News Reader

Walmart in talks to buy TV maker Vizio for more than $2B

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37 pointsKoftaBob67 comments

The FTC just needs a new law based on anti-trust that says multi billion dollar companies can't buy other billion dollar companies. Period.

Name the last time a multi-billion dollar merger worked for consumers.

Walmart buying cheap crappy TV brand is antitrust in a world that has many cheap crappy TV brands? At least the Microsoft and IE thing made some sense, it's not like we're hurting for choice here.

Clearly worked enough with Onn brand for them to keep consolidating.

Just at the surface level this hurts:

1. Other brands selling TVs in Walmart.

2. Advertisement space will be cheaper for Walmart when they advertise on their own TVs, toeing the line of anti-trust.

3. Companies that offer advertising and data aggregation across TV brands will now have fewer brands to sell on.

4. Fewer consumer TV brands in general.

5. Walmart can adopt a loss lead model, they don't need to actually make money on the TV, they can make it up in 2-3 other places. Similar to AWS and Amazon.

We've come a long way since fighting oil, metal, sugar and meat monopolies and cartels. Now we're worried about Walmart buying TV brands. Really puts the past century into perspective for me.

Was Onn ever a "real" brand? I had always assumed it was just a private label brand.

Just to be clear though, this will make the TVs cheaper for consumers?

Disney/Pixar is often considered a good one.

It’s still too recent but many are optimistic about Microsoft/Activision.

Also many bank acquisitions that prevent failure are obviously good.

To play devil’s advocate: Disney has had a lot of problems lately and there’s a very plausible alternate reality where Pixar staying independent forced Disney to do better.

The last 5 Pixar films are all flops, and all signs point to leadership at Disney interfering with the creative process.

> Also many bank acquisitions that prevent failure are obviously good.

We wouldn't worry about bank failure if they weren't so big in the first place?

> The last 5 Pixar films are all flops, and all signs point to leadership at Disney interfering with the creative process.

4 were flops in the sense that their theatrical releases did not cover their budgets, but only 1 of those (Lightyear) was because audiences didn't want to see it (and so could be blamed on the creative process).

The other 3 did not cover their budgets with their theatrical releases because they didn't have domestic theater releases (other than very short runs in a handful of theaters probably to preserve eligibility for awards) and their foreign releases were in a much smaller number of countries than other Pixar movies.

Domestically, and in countries that had Disney+, they went straight to streaming.

In reverse order:

• Elemental made nearly $500 million in its theatrical run. In no universe can that be considered to be a flop.

• Turning Red did not have a domestic theatrical release, and a fairly limited foreign release. It was only in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

In those countries in which both Turning Red and Toy Story 4 (the last Pixar movie before COVID started tanking box office) Turning Red earned about half of what Toy Story 4 did.

If we assume that ratio would have been similar in the countries Toy Story 4 was in that did not get Turning Red (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela) we get that Turning Red should have made around $420 million.

It was the second most watched streaming film of 2022.

• Similar for Luca. It's theatrical release was Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Türkiye, Ukraine, and United Arab Emirates.

In those countries that had both Luca and Toy Story 4, Luca earned $39 million and Toy Story 4 earned $70 million. That extrapolates to a full theatrical release for Luca would have been around $560 million.

It was the most watched streaming film of 2021.

• Soul's theatrical release was Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia/CIS, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

I don't have the Toy Story 4 comparison for that one, but its total foreign box office was about 2.4x that of Luca, suggesting that had it gotten a full theatrical release it would have have done quite a bit north of $600 million.

Soul's release timing made it so its peak streaming straddled the year boundary so it didn't get near top spots on yearly streaming lists but was on top of weekly or monthly lists at the end of 2020 and start of 2021.

Turning Red was released in 50+ countries - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8097030/releaseinfo/ I know it was released in at least one country not listed by you, because I have a photo of the movie poster from a theater (it stuck out to me as was using spanish language material, in a non spanish speaking country).

Note that list includes countries where it was only released on streaming. They are marked with "(internet)" and are more than half the list. Excluding all those (and one where it only was released for a specific film festival) there are 6 countries not on that list that weren't on mine.

My source was Box Office Mojo. It looks like they are only including countries where they have box office data.

Fortunately since that was where I got the Toy Story 4 data for comparison it doesn't seem like it affects the conclusions.

Didn’t Disney just buyout a competing studio ?

How was that better for consumers?

It doesn't really, but this leads to a situation where leadership kneecaps growth or hastily sells when around a $999 million valuation.

I can assure you, every founder I've worked with would go public before kneecapping growth or value.

It's not like when you sell your company you actually get all your equity as cash, you are certainly still working at your company for a year or more afterwards, with performance incentive stock options based on growth...

> company you actually get all your equity as cash

But many times you get a significant portion, enough that many founders can simply coast and it doesn't matter.

> you are certainly still working at your company for a year or more afterwards, with performance incentive stock

The meme of founders who sell their companies to Google and just sit there and do nothing has some truth to it.

Btw - when you go public you now have a very different set of "still working at your company" set of challenges and probably far worse with much more public scrutiny. You now answer to securities analysts, shareholders, lawyers, etc.

Github has been thriving under Microsoft with all of those Azure resources.

I give it 5 years max until enshittification takes over. Once they reach parity with CircleCi & GitLab, it will just be continual price increases.

Bitbucket is basically a non-competitor and Gitlab is focused on reaching profitability, something Github really doesn't have to worry about.

TMobile buying Sprint seems to have created a solid 3rd competitor in the cell phone space.

Shouldn't have ATT and VZW in the first place... Should be much smaller, in fact ATT was already broken up but then FTC policy changed.

Bit more complicated due to spectrum licensing, but theres a way to make it work with more carrier options.

ATT is still pretty broken up. Its components turned into Verizon, QWest and ATT. The vertical integration (every US telecom device before the breakup was physically manufactured by an ATT subsidiary) is gone.

Meanwhile, I don't see how having more than 3 companies building cellular infrastructure helps at all. Regulated access for MVNOs seems to fill the competition niche.

Three? It's basically just t-mo and vz.

AT&T.

Beats. Pretty shitty before the merger, much better quality afterwards.

I'd argue it's about the same, maybe slightly stronger focus on build quality. Bought the studio buds plus and they don't hold a candle to Airpods.

Gee I wonder why Beats doesn't have a direct competitors to Airpods?

Before the Apple acquisition Beats were ridiculed as being overly bassy and fashion focused. Post Apple acquisition they’ve at least gained a comparative reputation for sound quality. And they fill the sports segment of Apple’s lineup that Apple themselves don’t want to.

“let’s make an arbitrary rule because $s with a B in front are Bad”

Vizio TVs are cheap, but the usability is awful.

Slow, ad-ridden, always-online, and a limited ability to configure how the TV behaves.

You get what you pay for.

I have 2 Vizio tvs and neither is connected to the internet. I don’t use built in tv functionality because they all perform terrible and show unwanted content. I use 3rd party streaming boxes without issue. My oldest Vizio is nearly 10 years old and still works as well as I bought it and still on the same smart software from 10 years ago.

I owned a Vizio a few years ago, and that was my experience - I just needed a panel to turn on and show HDMI1, and bonus points if whatever was plugged in to HDMI1 could turn it on as well. That said, I don't think you and I are the majority, and a lot of people find it beneficial for these TVs to be online and stuff so they don't need a stick/box of some sort. Coming from the days of three remotes to watch a DVD with a stereo, and missing the days of Logitech Harmony, maybe it's not so bad to have one box and one remote handle everything for the average user. They clearly don't care about the ads or quality, so we shouldn't push that on them

A couple of years ago, Vizio posted that they earned more money from their analytics than TV sales. So of course that's how the TV behaves. It's also why they are so cheap.

They may be cheap and the UI does suck, but man, they are workhorses. I keep waiting for my 10+ year old 65" Vizio to die before I'll replace it with a 4K and it just won't quit.

I got a cheap Vizio TV for free that I was really impressed with the design of. That is, it did not have the outrageous number of HDMI plugs that a Sony has and didn't have stupid "Smart TV" features but instead it had some good quality and good sized speakers such that it was not a big improvement to add a soundbar to it. It really seemed to me that every cent on the BOM was carefully spent to deliver value.

One of the boards burned out though and one of my son's friends bought a Samsung TV that is also too low end to have "smart" features but I like it a lot less than the Vizio. (If I did not keep getting free TVs I might have upgraded my TV a long time ago...)

My last 2 TV's have been the higher end Vizio's and they have been great, sure they are showing their age next to OLED TV's right now but so are a lot of far more expensive ones from that same time.

But I never connect it to the internet and no matter the manufacture you never should, they are a privacy nightmare.

Mine sits on HDMI 1, it has receiver for everything else. It has been a great TV. and was hard to argue with the price of the 75" Quantum X at about $2400 in 2019.

Now most likely due to various situations I won't be going with Vizio next time and will be looking at better brands and likely just going with LG. But lets not discount the hardware itself.

The weird thing is if you lucked out like I did and got one of their earliest SmartCast TVs. My SmartCast came from the very apparently shortlived "Chromecast built-in" era and did not receive upgrades or updates to it to make it "smarter".

All my Vizio does is HDMI, QAM tuning, and an input that launches the Chromecast-built-in. They also had a very short-lived Android tablet as a companion device that would be your control surface to cast content to the TV with (installing your streaming apps to it, etc).

That was a good era of Vizio smart TVs. As soon as they actually made the TV do any heavy lifting, it got bad instantly.

I have one of these, but I never even used the Chromecast tablet/remote, I just plugged in an Apple TV 4K and disabled internet access for the TV itself on my router. I imagine this would work for the new even-crappier models as well.

I have two, one which I bought a few months ago. I find the menu navigation to be pretty fast, and it isn’t ad-ridden since I keep it offline (plug an iPhone/iPad/computer). It may not work for everyone, but it works for me.

How does a TV not work if it's not online? How does a TV get ads if it's not online?

Seems like you just don't connect it to the internet.

Meanwhile, that surprises me. I thought Vizios were good cheap TVs. Maybe that is a reputation from a long time ago?

> How does a TV get ads if it's not online?

Multiple ways that can be made possible:

- first of all, some satellite and DVB-C/T boxes and also TVs such as my ages old Samsung can update their firmware over the air (e.g. [1], page 54). It's possible to use a similar channel to distribute advertising as well.

- embedded WiFi that auto-connects to open networks such as many ISP routers provision in exchange for allowing the line owner access to the provider's hotspot network

- embed a LTE modem

The first way costs money, as renting aerial transmission time is not cheap, LTE modems + data plans are cheaper but still have a hardware cost attached even if manufacturers cut deals with providers, and almost every TV these days has a wifi stack built in.

[1] https://cdn-reichelt.de/documents/datenblatt/F100/BDA_EXTREM...

This. I have a TCL TV which has great picture and nice-enough audio but the "smart" part isn't great at all. Slow, random ads, etc.

It was my first smart tv so I was curious to try it.

Then I went and factory-reset the thing, unplugged the ethernet cable, and now it works like a dumb TV. I'm very happy with it.

It still shows a popup when turned on that I don't have internet, but that's about it. It'll automatically switch to the latest used input when starting up.

The two things that bother me is that it takes ages to boot up if the "quick start-up" is disabled (basically it needs to boot the whole google tv os), and the LED is quite bright at night (but it can be disabled, just not dimmed). It also seems to have no battery for the RTC, so if I unplug it, it will forget the time when I turn it on again (since it doesn't have an internet connection, it never gets to sync).

Does that time the TV believes it is matter? I don't have a great use case in mind.

I wonder when (or if) an alternative OS project will start that dumbs down TVs like yours. Primarily to fix the boot time issues.

The TCLs already run AndroidTV, which you can customize, sideload, root, etc. and isn't really the issue. There's also a "fast on" option that will put the TV in standby, so turning it on is almost instant. A full boot only takes 10-20 seconds. But you still, kinda need the firmware updates, because sometimes issues with HDR are only fixed years later.

According to the man, it pumps a lot of power in the fast-boot mode, and since I don't use the TV that often, I prefer to wait.

However, the time between pressing the power on button and the TV being ready is closer to one minute than 20 secondes.

> Does that time the TV believes it is matter? I don't have a great use case in mind.

It does if I want to see what the time is and I don't have my watch on.

If you are using everything coming through HDMI from a (presumably smart) device, why would you care to get that info from the TV?

Because the smart device doesn't give me that info, at least not in a way that I've found.

I don't consider this a huge issue, for years I'd been using my PC's monitor instead of this TV; it never had any idea about what time it was.

I recently had to have some warranty work done on a TCL TV due to a failed board and the process was absolutely horrendous. Just a heads up.

I think that may be a universal experience with TV repairs, based on a friends experience with a name brand. He had to bring it to a local repair shop where they then held it for over 6 months. Maybe he was just unlucky.

I've had several that work wonderfully. I just never connect them to the internet and plug in a Chromecast / Apple TV and use that exclusively.

The TV hardware is great, and a terrific value.

Perfect match for Walmart then

Walmart has a TV brand, and I don't really see why buying (and destroying) Vizio would help them to the tune of $2B. Vizio is one of the better "bargain" brands in my experience.

It would also give Walmart access to the breadth of customer data collected by Vizio’s smart TV platform and the revenue stream created by serving up personalized ads and taking a cut of subscription fees.

This is an interesting angle considering Walmart wants to (and probably already does) make a meaningful amount of revenue from selling ads, like Amazon.

https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/vizio-device-sal...

I guess the numbers kind of work, $80m a quarter profit is $320m a year, which is roughly commensurate with the rumored purchase price.

Spectre?

Onn is the Walmart tech brand, which is decent for "need it quick".

We've had pretty good luck with Insignia (in-house Best Buy brand) for a "cheap TV solution".

Makes sense.

Vizio largely just assembles TVs specifically by purchasing parts from local ODMs in China, Taiwan, Mexico, VN, etc.

It's basically just a brandname slapped on generic tv manufacturers.

Walmart has a similar operation, and they are probably going to acquire Vizio to make a secondary upsell within Walmart.

“Don’t skimp and get the Vizio, get what you deserve, get the Sony”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eyJxkc6Xz4&pp

Nothing beats a Sony, remotes all the same, simple hackable android based os.

Recently I made the mistake of getting a lg... nothing but problems with hdmi cec, stupid remote, lame os; wish I would’ve stuck with the Sony…

I agree, but still find it weird — Sony use LG (or Samsung, depending on the model) panels in their TVs, so you'd assume that "going to the source" would be better.

Sony uses Samsung panel for their top-end OLED. What gives them the edge over samsung is that their image processing is the best in the industry.

I’ve found Rokus to be the sweet spot of price and usability and quality.

First thing I thought of when I saw this article

Vizio make some of the best soundbars I've owned or experienced... Hopefully that doesn't change if Walmart buys them. I always assumed Vizio was a "Walmart Brand" anyway...

Their soundbars are the best for the price. They are not great, but certainly better than competitors (such as Samsung) if you are in the low end of the market.

Vizio used to make good, cheap panels. When they switched to smart TVs, the consumer experience degraded in the expected ways.

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