After a few days with fios and with Dish still fresh in my head I thought I would write a comparison for anyone that was wondering.
Things that are the same or similar:
HD PQ. Sorry, but I can’t tell a huge difference, they both look great and some channels still look bad. Like ESPN, can look bad at times on both. Fios looks a little better but not something that will make me switch just for that, I never had a problem with Dish PQ. Maybe if I had a bigger tv I could tell, but with the ones we have, all 32” 720p, and one sd, not a big difference. Our 60” dlp broke so can’t tell the difference with that one. Audio and SD PQ is a different story.
HD Selection: Pretty similar, a lot more than the package we had on dish, but those with AT250 you will lose some, and gain some. Just depends on what you like, Fios has all ESPN HD channels, dish has cooking channel and BBC A in HD.
DVR Space: Pretty much the same, hopper only has 500GB for user, and never was able to find out if you disable PTAT will you get that 500GB back. 722 k I believe also has 500gb but some is given to dish for vod. 922 also only has 500GB for user. Fios has 500gb for user. Although fios recordings take up more space, like ota’s on dish take up more space because of less compression.
Expand Storage: Both can expand storage, but you need ESATA HDD for fios, while dish can use the cheaper usb 2.0 HDD. Have not used it yet on Fios so can’t do a full comparison.
Receiver fees: These are pretty much the same. Fios its $19.99 for a home dvr and $15.99 for a dvr, $9.99 for an hd box, no sd only boxes anymore. You get discounts for having multiple boxes, the more you get the cost per box goes down. Dish, duo dvr $17, duo $14. Single dvr $10, single $7, hopper $7, joey $7, first free. The reason they end up being similar is that dish charges a separate dvr fee, home dvr fee and for the service plan. Fios does not have these charges; they are basically built into the price of the box. 1 hopper 3 joyes would be $37, 1 722k 3 211k would be $33 with no sharing, 1 home dvr and 3 stb on fios is $38.99 with sharing after a $10.97 discount per month.
However, Fios has no upfront fees for equipment. We only had to pay $40 for the install of the two STBs, because they only install the first three boxes free, each additional install is $20. We paid nothing extra for the 2 more dvrs, so we have 6 tuners that can record, with dish if we wanted another hopper it would have been $100, or two more 722ks it would have been $200 and would not be able to get any more boxes.
Bugs: each has their bugs, the fios dvr sometimes hiccups in the guide if you go far ahead, does not refresh the schedule right away after changing priority. My 722k had a bug since the new year that after each nightly update it would rest all the times I had skipped, mainly things with bad guide data, like the Simpsons which my local fox station shows daily, it would want to record it 3 times, twice on sat and once on ota because the guide had no episode data. Also skipping soccer matches I did not want, then having them rest every day and recording anyway. Nothing major for the two, but each have their bugs.
Dish Pros over fios:
· You can better organize your dvr with folders.
· Easy to add sling adapter, never used it myself but heard a lot of good things on this forum about it.
· Ota recording and 4 tuners on 722k and 922. This is kind of a pro and con, as you kind of need it with dish if you want cw and pbs in hd, and local substations, you don’t need it for fios. And it can be flakey at times and cause the box to freeze and think it lost sat reception.
· The volume control that keeps commercials from blasting.
· PIP on the 722k, loved this during football season
· Loved the uhf remote, kept my 722k in the closet to save space on my bureau.
· You can turn a 211k into a dvr
· More national hd channels over Fios. Fios has more overall, but they fill up on these carp .tv channels and west hd channels of the premiums. It’s funny that they put the .tv channels in the highest pack only, as if they are anything you would want to pay for. But they also have all the local HD channels.
· Never used it for this, but android app can view dvr if you have sling.
· While the guide on fios looks better, dish has some neat things like only seeing subbed channels and hd only. Fios has favorites, but does not have any preset ones that are easy to use like dish.
Fios Pros over dish:
· One cord needed to the box, no need for Ethernet to get other features. Ability to use a moca bridge so you can add a wired internet connection for another device with the same cord that goes to the cable box, like an xbox, ps3 or roku box, without having to lay another Ethernet cord or rely on wireless.
· Hd guide is better. Never used the hopper or 922 guide, so can only compare to 722k
· All dvrs can share with each other, and stb can set and view recordings to any dvr. We have 3 dvrs so we are coordinating recordings so we don’t record things twice since we can all share.
· Recover deleted recordings. Space allowing you can recover something you deleted. If you are completely full I don’t think this will work.
· Audio quality is much better, and sd PQ is 100 times better, all the Spanish channels are in SD so this makes a big difference in our household.
· Vod is great and fast, but way to many menus to get through to find what you want. You can set bookmarks however for stations or programs you watch often.
· Android app is much better and easy to use, but it’s a pain in the butt to setup because of syncing with the box for using your phone as a remote, even if you don’t want to use this feature.
· No upfront fees for equipment. I got 3 dvrs, 2 stb, the tech also upgraded our old fios router with their new N router, he gave me an Ethernet switch for my room since the extra wireless router I had could cause problems with the media share, and a moca bridge for my brother’s room to hook up his xbox all at no cost. Fios also includes HDMI with their boxes, we already had most hooked up that way, so he just switched out the one that had component and gave us the rest to keep if we needed them later. Dish charges like $20 for hdmi cords during install.
· No blank screen at start of dvr recordings, especially with back to back ones, would always miss something on dish because the first 30secs are a black screen while it starts a new recording, usually the end of the previous show. Fios does not have this.
· No weather interference
Dish Cons:
· VOD just plain sucks
· With hopper system, joeys can’t all watch live tv at the same time. The choice to only have 3 tuners was a big mistake imo, makes it very limited.
· Hard to get multiple good duo dvrs on same account because of 6 leased tuner limit. And the only duo dvr that counts as a single, 612, sucks.
Fios Cons:
· No ability to do folders in DVR, just a long list.
· No easy way to add remote viewing without buying a sling.
· No PIP
That’s all I can think of right now, hope it helps people compare.
