Okay, here’s my report after a week of FIOS.
It’s been great, with only a few minor snags. The installation went well. The technicians were very good: competent, polite, considerate, and just nice guys. They had a few problems, not of their causing, and one of them stayed until 7:30, but got everything done.
The main problem is that the person who took the original order got several things wrong, so I didn’t get one of the movie packages I asked for, I’m not seeing all the HD channels I’m supposed to get, and she signed me up for the Home Media package, which is only relevant when you have multiple TVs, which I don’t. I’ve called several times to have this fixed, and it was supposed to be done yesterday (a week after the original install), but it wasn’t. The guy I spoke to today says it should be done today. We’ll see.
But the service, TV and Internet, is great. More channels, better quality, faster speed. Although the speed tests I’ve run have been strangely inconsistent, some as low as 5 Mbps, I’ve seen some as high as 15. They had to replace my existing wireless router (which I was hoping to keep in place) with their own cable modem/wireless router combo, but they simply patched into the wiring I already had in place for both Internet and TV. In other words, the last 10 feet from the Optical Network Terminal (ONT), where the fiber comes in, to the modem and the set-top box (STB) is coax, just like Comcast. I wonder if that might be a choke point in terms of speed or signal quality?
I like almost all aspects of my new STB, a Motorola QIP6416-2 HD DVR, compared to the Scientific Atlanta HD DVR I had with Comcast. It cures most, if not all, of the quirks of the other unit, although it does have a few of its own. The SA unit wouldn’t let you record a show at a certain time every Monday, say. It let you record either every broadcast of a show at any time on any day, or at a certain time, regardless of the day. This was annoying with many of the HBO series I watch, because they routinely replay episodes later in the week, often at the same time. So I’d end up with multiple copies of the same episode. The Motorola doesn’t do this, and it also lets you select only new episodes, rejecting re-runs, which the SA wouldn’t do.
The Moto allows you to start recordings several minutes early and end them after the scheduled times. This is useful for sporting events that may go long, or for shows that may be delayed after sports events. The SA couldn’t do it, except by manual programming.
For some reason, Verizon has not implemented Picture-in-Picture on the Moto, although the buttons are there on the remote. The SA could do it, and I used it occasionally. This is one of the only significant things I’ve lost by moving to FIOS.
Neither Verizon nor Comcast have implemented the ability of their boxes to let the user connect additional external storage. The Moto reportedly has the capacity for 20 hours of HD programming or 80+ hours of standard programming. I think the SA had 30 hours of HD capacity. I’d like more than 20.
There are two downsides with the new TV service. Comcast assigned many basic channels (Comedy Central, Speed, CNN, ESPN, etc.) to the channels below 100 that my VCR and DVD recorder could receive directly through their tuners, where Verizon sends only the local broadcast channels. This means that the VCR and DVD recorder are now essentially useless for live or timed recordings. There have been occasions when I was recording two shows on the DVR, and wanted to record a third as well. Rare, but it happens. Or I may want an old movie from TCM that I know I’ll want to keep on DVD. Before I could have just recorded it straight to DVD. Now I have to either record the output of the STB (which means I can’t watch something else at the same time) or record the show on the DVR and later copy it, in real time, to DVD.
I’m actually toying with the idea of signing back up for the basic cable channels with Comcast, just to keep this capability. I probably won’t, but this is probably the worst aspect of FIOS service.
The other problem with FIOS is having to memorize a whole new set of channel numbers after years of using Comcast’s numbers. Comedy Central is now 170, not 58. HBO HD is 851, not 228. Twenty years ago my brain could have handled this easily, but as the man said, I’m getting too old for this shit.