FIOS after a month

[SatelliteGAL]

It's now been about a month and a half since the switch from Dish to FIOS. We are very happy with the switch. At first it was really hard because we had dish for so long we pretty much had the channel numbers memorized. Our family is not big on sports... an occasional game but not into 150 sports channels so any lack of sports.... if there are any.. is not a negative to us. The channel lineup offered all of the channels that we watch 98% of the time in HD. My son occasionally watched BBC HD but the SD version has been acceptable to him. I did not watch Soapnet enough to miss it.

On the plus side.....
Number one .......The picture quality is amazing. There is a definite very obvious improvement on both HD and SD channels. I can't emphasize enough that this is the biggest plus. WOW is back!
VOD With everything in repeats before the new season starts again we made use of the VOD. We watched some series that we had not started watching when they first came on. There are a lot of free things to choose from. We have not had it long enough but we understand this will make up for the lack of recording space when the new season starts.
We are paying less for more because of the bundling.

On the minus side....
The DVR has a small hard drive so you can not record a lot.
The guide/ gui is not as sophisticated as Dish and to us seems very awkward. It is better than what we saw on time warner and the picture quality over rides the small minus this seems to be once you are used to it. There is an update in the works that looks really good but we know better than to expect anyone to roll these things out as they expect.
The pause live tv feature does not pause for very long.... I think it is only about 20 min from what we can tell.
VOD The minus on the VOD is the fact that pause/skip forward/skip back is disabled on a lot of the things you watch on vod. Usually there is a very short ad in between so you can't even go to the kitchen to get a glass of water before the show is back. I think you can stop and resume them but I am not sure. If anyone is more familiar with the process and has any hints please let me know. We have just made sure to do those things before we start watching something.

 

[riffjim4069]

SG,

I'm glad you're enjoying the service. We've had FiOS (Triple Play) at our Dallas home and love it! I've always been and HD-purist (i.e., in most cases I can tell the difference between HD and HD-Lite) and I truly appreciate the HD picure quality of FiOS TV. Moreover, we are on our 32nd month of service with not one second of service outage...TV, Phone, or Internet. It just always works!

Do yourself a favor and get yourself a TivoHD or Tivo Premiere....you will love the Tivo w/CableCard just as much as the 622/722 after a couple weeks of ajusting to it - it's much, much better than the so-so FiOS DVR. Trust me! Heck, even Bob Haller loves his TivoHD.

BTW, Costco (at least my local warehouse) is dumping the TivoHD for $129. We have a TivoHD and Premiere and I picked one up for a backup.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

I did not want to start anything negative about dish in the regular forums. They were the best in our area for a long time. Time Warner was never very good.

I have started looking at the Tivo's and trying to figure them all out. We would not need the highest level in all our rooms. Since we were never used to VOD I don't know if we will miss it but I understand it will not be available on the TIvo. Tivo does pause live tv and etc though correct?

We do not have a Costco here.

 

[Bob Haller]

Yeh TIVO with cablecard doesnt support VOD

So I currently have a comcast digital box with VOD and a TIVO.

I am using comcast bundle.....

for about what I was paying for E and their added fees I am getting comcast, 16 meg down internet, and a phone line. once I trust the phone line i will use it... for incoming overflow business calls......

TIVO has some nice advantages over the 722K push record during any show and it starts record from shows beginning, its always on no need to wake up box in AM a small but annoying issue. plus the tivos content belongs to me. not encrypted like E....

the best decision E ever made for me was jacking up the fees, it got me shopping saving big bucks.

IMHO sat providers are going to be in a world of hurt if they dont have a bundling alternative.........

 

[vurbano]

I never have and never will pay for VOD. TivoHD + copy freely FIOS is the S&*t.

 

[mike123abc]

You can get TiVo with XL drive (1 TB) and get 150 hours of recording. If that is not enough you can plug in another 1TB HD (has to be certain approved ones, and they are not removeable once you start to use it) for 300 hours.

You then get a program from TiVo to download programs from your TiVo to your PC drives (better alternative I think than the plug in extra drive). You can watch them from your PC when you want to do so. The program allows you to auto transfer series and such so if you like something a lot you can auto archive to your PC.

 

[navychop]

Did you routinely use the 30 second "skip ahead" button on your old Dish receivers? Do you miss it on the new Fios box?

 

[SatelliteGAL]

I never have and never will pay for VOD. TivoHD + copy freely FIOS is the S&*t.

In the case of FIOS VOD there is a ton of free stuff. It is not the same as Dish was. They have ABC, CBS, NBC and SYFY (amongst others) series on VOD. So instead of recording NCIS... or whatever, you can watch it on VOD. Small example but I am sure you get the idea.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

Did you routinely use the 30 second "skip ahead" button on your old Dish receivers? Do you miss it on the new Fios box?

My FIOS boxes have skip forward and skip back. I can adjust the amount of time it skips forward/back in settings. I did not mess with the original settings. I just saw the options when I was exploring the box

 

[SatelliteGAL]

The FIOS really works very similar to the 622/722s that we had. Granted it is not as good looking and the guide/gui is not as sophisticated but it does a lot of the same. I think our biggest adjustment really was trying to figure out our channel numbers. We had to keep looking at a list We are about to find out if the lack of HD space is an issue or the network VOD makes up for it. I know our area was a test area for the Cisco boxes but I haven't heard what the test outcome was. OUr installer actually called to see about their availability because I was concerned about the lack of HD space. He knew they were being tested. The answer was not yet but at least he knew & called. I'm going to familiarize myself with the TIvo boxes because it has always been extremely popular and seems like a very good option for at least one of our sets.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

You can get TiVo with XL drive (1 TB) and get 150 hours of recording. If that is not enough you can plug in another 1TB HD (has to be certain approved ones, and they are not removeable once you start to use it) for 300 hours.

You then get a program from TiVo to download programs from your TiVo to your PC drives (better alternative I think than the plug in extra drive). You can watch them from your PC when you want to do so. The program allows you to auto transfer series and such so if you like something a lot you can auto archive to your PC.

So... can you transfer from one Tivo to another? to be able to watch something recorded in one room in another room? (if you have more than one tivo) Or am I getting confrused?

 

[riffjim4069]

So... can you transfer from one Tivo to another? to be able to watch something recorded in one room in another room? (if you have more than one tivo) Or am I getting confrused?

Yes. It's not quite MRV, but you can still watch the show while it's being transfered. Transfer works great (the premiere transfer much faster than the Series 3 and faster than the TivoHD...same with hardline over Wireless-G). I'm not big into sending recording to the PC, but you can do it free-of-charge and Tivo makes a $25 app (Tivo2Go?)that many use to format recordings and place them on their iPhones, iPads, Archos', etc. Vurbano will have to chime-in on Tivo2Go...

 

[Islandguy43]

It's now been about a month and a half since the switch from Dish to FIOS.

Congrats, I am jealous and wish Verizon would wake up so I could get FIOS on the island. However I don't believe you get the HD Feeds of the Yankees or perhaps MSG too?

 

[mike123abc]

Yes the TiVos allow transfer between each other and you can copy to/from a PC. You can start watching while the transfer is going on. Note that you cannot just watch, you have to do a transfer.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

Congrats, I am jealous and wish Verizon would wake up so I could get FIOS on the island. However I don't believe you get the HD Feeds of the Yankees or perhaps MSG too?

Forgive me if I confuse some of these channels because neither I or my family is heavily into sports. I know we get YES HD and I know it was really great looking because I didn't know what some of the channels were so I was just looking through them at first. MSG I do not believe we have in HD. I only see MSG, MSG2, MSG PLUS listed in the SD channel numbers.

We were the last little corner in our area to get FIOS. It was all around us for over a year.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

I missed a great Tivo deal this AM!
Get a TiVo Premiere DVR for $147 shipped | The Cheapskate - CNET News
I should check my home emails more often I guess. I did see the other offer they mention that is on the Tivo homepage. You can get a tivo if you sign up for $20 per month for two years. The page I originally read the offer on said you would continue to pay the $20 per month after that commitment time as well which means you would be paying too much simply to not pay for it up front.

 

[riffjim4069]

Coupon Code has unfortunately expired...

 

[tnsprin]

I never have and never will pay for VOD. TivoHD + copy freely FIOS is the S&*t.

There is a lot of FREE HD VOD on FIOS. And if you have the Premium channels then VOD for most of their content is FREE as well. Lack of VOD on Tivo is definely a question, as is the reported plans to mark more premium copy with copy protection.

Hoping that IMG 1.9 support of external Disk comes this year as reportedly planned.

 

[navychop]

Mein Gott! Fios has MPT in my area! This is a big plus. Maybe next year I'll have to compare channels between Dish 250P HD and Fios to see what channels I'd lose if I moved. Someone posted once before; it seems I'd lose one or two that I regularly watch, but these things change. And maybe a better (Cisco?) HD DVR will come out. It might take me a year to get accurate, complete pricing out of them!

Anyone in Fairfax County VA care to share the line items on their bill, so I might get a good idea of the true final cost? Since I already get their internet and landline, I oughta save something, although probably not the $40/month I hoped for.

 

[SatelliteGAL]

Coupon Code has unfortunately expired...

That's what I meant when I said I missed it. Apparently it was still active in the am and I didnt see the email until pm. It happens to me all the time lol