What is the latest DVR?

navychop

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What brand and model is the latest Fios DVR? I gather NY has the latest but it seems the DC area does not.

Is it "whole home?"

Are there wiring diagrams to see how STBs are connected? Or is it standard cable (bus)?

Are there 30 second ahead/back buttons?

Can you expand storage with EHDs?


Thank you in advance. Last night I found little info on the website. Today I went to read DVR model details and it was unavailable.
 
I am getting it Wednesday, I will post more then. But I used the new ones at my brothers house, they are Motorola still, model 7232, and have 500GB drive, and are sleek black with white numbers on the face plate. The EHD was supposed to be added on with the hd guide update, but I am not 100% on that as he has not tried to add one. The remotes are the same and have the skip buttons. The website still shows the old crappy moto ones, I told them if I get any of those I will not allow the install, lol. We will see. And they are set up the same way, one cord to the dvr. And it is whole home if all the other boxes are non-dvr, if you have another dvr they can not see the home dvr, nor can the other boxes see the regular dvr. I do know they are the exact same boxes, the only difference from one being a home dvr and just a normal dvr is if they activate as such, so its a software thing that lets them share over MOCA. The same way the old boxes were set up as well, so if you get a regular dvr and you later add another tv, you can just call and add a box and they will activate the home dvr so you can share, no need to change out the dvr.

Review: Verizon FiOS HD DVR review (1.9) -- Engadget
Wiring: Verizon | FiOS TV - Connecting a Motorola 7232-P2 HD DVR to and HD TV and A/V Receiver (Video)
 
I have A 7232 and a 7216 both can see each other .There is a 1tb EHD on the 7216 plus 500 on the 7232 I have a total of 5 boxs 3Hd 2 dvr and they can see each other and I can record and delete from any box. I like the fios stuff better than my 622.Been with dish over 12 years Fios 4 years.Thee new hopper guide sort of looks like fios.
 
I have A 7232 and a 7216 both can see each other .There is a 1tb EHD on the 7216 plus 500 on the 7232 I have a total of 5 boxs 3Hd 2 dvr and they can see each other and I can record and delete from any box. I like the fios stuff better than my 622.Been with dish over 12 years Fios 4 years.Thee new hopper guide sort of looks like fios.

We've been FiOS customers since March 2008 (4-years now) and our biggest gripe---only one for that matter---was the DVR. We kept a 7216 on the account mainly for On Demand (in addition to it being free for 2-years), but we mainly used our Tivos. Anyway, I replaced the FiOS DVR with a 7232 six months ago and we love IMG 1.9 just as much as our Tivos. In fact, I may actually retire our TivoHD and Premiere if Tivo doesn't offer me a great deal on a lifetime subscription, and replace them with the FiOS DVR. We shall see. I agree with you on the 622. I gave them to my mother in-law who upgraded to HD last summer. She likes it just fine (it's her first DVR) but the UI is dated. The 622 was one of the first gadgets that my wife actually loved (she actually thanked me for buying it) when we first bought them. We were recently visiting her mother and she said, "I can't stand this thing" when using the 622. Go figure!
 
I have A 7232 and a 7216 both can see each other .There is a 1tb EHD on the 7216 plus 500 on the 7232 I have a total of 5 boxs 3Hd 2 dvr and they can see each other and I can record and delete from any box. I like the fios stuff better than my 622.Been with dish over 12 years Fios 4 years.Thee new hopper guide sort of looks like fios.
That's great if the dvrs can see each other, we can coordinate recordings that way so we are not doing things twice. The only thing i don't like is you saying anyone can delete, is there a way to protect or block that? What kind of ehd do you have connected to the two? We have three usb 1tb drives that we use on dish currently, two as dvr drives for the 211ks and one as an archive for the 722k. Also, can they see each other because you have them both setup as home media dvrs? We are only going to activate one with that, the other two will be just regular dvrs, saves about $10 a month.
 
Just finished setting up and everything is working well, the new boxes are very fast and responsive. We were actually supposed to get only one and then two of the older ones because the 7232 are in limited supply. But I was telling him that one of the reasons we left fios was because i hated the old boxes. He said he usually only has two on hand but when he checked his truck he had 3 and said he would give them to me if it was going to be a deal breaker :), so we got 3 7232 boxes, and two set top boxes. The guy was really helpful, and upgraded the router as well to the new N router, gave me an Ethernet switch for my room since he said the extra wireless router i had setup might mess up the dvr sharing, and also left me with a moca to Ethernet adapter for my brothers room for his xbox and ps3. And all the dvrs can see each other, and the STB can set recordings to any one of them. Just hope that it does not cause any problems with someone deleting something they should not. Picture quality looks a little better, but not overwhelmingly, and will miss the PIP, but can live without that.
 
I Have the multi-room 4 room pack for 38.99 ( 7232 and 3 hd boxes ) plus 1 hd dvr 16.00 . You can only have 1 home media per account.The new IMG 1.9 lets all boxes see the dvrs as long as 1 is a multi room You will need a eSATA drive for the ehd .I have western digital mybook av.You can protect all recordings with save till I delete and put passwords on all boxes.There is a lot you can change with 1.9 gui set up it works very well and fast.My 622 is very dated my wife and daughter love fios and with the 2 dvrs that gives you 4 tuners i can record a lot of programs plus I still have my good old 622 as a back up. Also on damand has so much to watch .
 
Glad you got the three 7232 that gives you 1.5 tb The fios hd vs dish is a lot better even sd looks good . I will be watching dish hd and switch to fios and say wow. Enjoy your new fios :)
 
I Have the multi-room 4 room pack for 38.99 ( 7232 and 3 hd boxes ) plus 1 hd dvr 16.00 . You can only have 1 home media per account.The new IMG 1.9 lets all boxes see the dvrs as long as 1 is a multi room You will need a eSATA drive for the ehd .I have western digital mybook av.You can protect all recordings with save till I delete and put passwords on all boxes.There is a lot you can change with 1.9 gui set up it works very well and fast.My 622 is very dated my wife and daughter love fios and with the 2 dvrs that gives you 4 tuners i can record a lot of programs plus I still have my good old 622 as a back up. Also on damand has so much to watch .
ok, the installer said the ones we were using on the dish boxes might work but to check on online. He said usb should work, but have not tried it yet. I will just get one when or if i need more space if i need to get an eSATA one. And really like the new feature if you are on an sd channel and it has an hd counterpart, it tells you to press c to go to the hd, will be good for my parents.
 
The dvr actually has a restore function :), so someone accidently deleting something should not be a problem. Just tried it out and it worked perfectly.
 
Hey guys, Verizon only had Motorola (and Cisco) open up the eSATA port for external storage. Any eSATA EHD should work as long as it is formatted for UDP. Verizon recommends (only supports) Western Digital and sells them thru their website.
 
Does the 7232 (or any Fios) DVR allow for recording OTA? Even Fios does not seem to carry all subchannels or even channels in the DC metro area.

Anyone using a Sling Adapter with a Fios DVR?
 
Does the 7232 (or any Fios) DVR allow for recording OTA? Even Fios does not seem to carry all subchannels or even channels in the DC metro area.

Anyone using a Sling Adapter with a Fios DVR?

You can't use a Sling Adapter with FiOS as only the Dish receivers support it, but a regular Slingbox will work fine. I don't believe any FiOS DVR supports OTA.
 
You can't use a Sling Adapter with FiOS as only the Dish receivers support it, but a regular Slingbox will work fine. I don't believe any FiOS DVR supports OTA.

MAJOR brain fart. I meant to say Sling. I know the adapter is only for Dish. Thank you for the OTA info. That means keeping my Sony DHG500 or buying another DTV Pal DVR or similar. I don't think the Sony is long for this world, OTA wise.

I've now gotten "determined." I will, one way or another, beat the information out of them on their product "Fios." They actually appear to intend to keep it all a secret, by not training their CSRs, and dare I say, firing any that learn anything. I will learn how it compares to Dish DVRs. I will learn how a second HDTV, or even a third SDTV or HDTV would connect, at what cost and features. I will learn if the failure of the DVR means the loss of EHD programs. I will learn the costs, both with a 2 year contract, and the costs after that contract, or initially without a contract. And if I can try it for a month, then commit to two years with full savings. And I will learn about a skip forward and skip back button features, which seem utterly unfathomable to their CSRs. And I will learn which HD channels I get with Dish will only be SD with Fios (I've almost got that one!). Remote access? Well, forget that one.

Nobody's that incompetent. They're deliberately not training their people. They must want the stupid or clueless X percent of customers. Yet every week, at least, I get a "great offer" that actually explains nothing, trying to get me to switch to Fios TV.

I'll do all this, simply because I've been led to believe they are trying their best to ensure the new customer has no idea what he's getting in to. And I view it as a challenge. At this point, I KNOW I can count on absolutely no help whatsoever from Fios, in the event of trouble. And I thought Cox was bad. This alone makes it exceedingly unlikely I will switch. But - there are local interest channels of importance to my wife (Fairfax County channels). And there MIGHT be significant savings, AFTER the 2 year "good deal." To leave Dish after 10 years, and happy service, would be difficult, but not impossible. I am dumbfounded by the lack of knowledge and customer service available by phone or chat. And I've been repeatedly lied to by relatively senior people in Fios that I've talked with face to face. They might have a good product, but they're hiding it behind a wall of stupidity. I really find it difficult to believe that I can't get straight answers to what I consider simple questions!
 
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MAJOR brain fart. I meant to say Sling. I know the adapter is only for Dish. Thank you for the OTA info. That means keeping my Sony DHG500 or buying another DTV Pal DVR or similar. I don't think the Sony is long for this world, OTA wise.

I've now gotten "determined." I will, one way or another, beat the information out of them on their product "Fios." They actually appear to intend to keep it all a secret, by not training their CSRs, and dare I say, firing any that learn anything. I will learn how it compares to Dish DVRs. I will learn how a second HDTV, or even a third SDTV or HDTV would connect, at what cost and features. I will learn if the failure of the DVR means the loss of EHD programs. I will learn the costs, both with a 2 year contract, and the costs after that contract, or initially without a contract. And if I can try it for a month, then commit to two years with full savings. And I will learn about a skip forward and skip back button features, which seem utterly unfathomable to their CSRs. And I will learn which HD channels I get with Dish will only be SD with Fios (I've almost got that one!). Remote access? Well, forget that one.

Nobody's that incompetent. They're deliberately not training their people. They must want the stupid or clueless X percent of customers. Yet every week, at least, I get a "great offer" that actually explains nothing, trying to get me to switch to Fios TV.

I'll do all this, simply because I've been led to believe they are trying their best to ensure the new customer has no idea what he's getting in to. And I view it as a challenge. At this point, I KNOW I can count on absolutely no help whatsoever from Fios, in the event of trouble. And I thought Cox was bad. This alone makes it exceedingly unlikely I will switch. But - there are local interest channels of importance to my wife (Fairfax County channels). And there MIGHT be significant savings, AFTER the 2 year "good deal." To leave Dish after 10 years, and happy service, would be difficult, but not impossible. I am dumbfounded by the lack of knowledge and customer service available by phone or chat. And I've been repeatedly lied to by relatively senior people in Fios that I've talked with face to face. They might have a good product, but they're hiding it behind a wall of stupidity. I really find it difficult to believe that I can't get straight answers to what I consider simple questions!
The thing is not that they are trying to hide the facts, its that the CSR's usually don't have the services themselves. Remember Fios is still in a pretty limited area around the nation, so where ever thier call centers are they might not even be able to get it in their homes. The first CSR told me as much. The second one I called was better.
But I can answer most those questions with the exception of the EHD one.
Anyway, with the skip forward and back, its the same as dish, with the exception that you can customize it. In menus-settings-dvr you will see skip and replay where you can set the time it skips forward or back, you can chose 10sec, 30sec, 1min, or 5 min for each. I have set to 30sec skip and 10sec skip back since I was used to that on dish. The new software also has chaptering of a recording, if you enable this when you watch a program you just hit arrow up and the chapters will come up, they vary from 3min chapters and up, depending on the length of the program. I recorded a two hour program last night and the chapters are 10min long, they show up as a row of thumbnails so you can skip ahead easily to a part like a bluray. Another thing that is different is that the arrow buttons will not work for changing channels like the dish remote, still getting used to that, lol.

As far as the hd channels, you are going to have a hard time really comparing everything. You should really just write down all the channels you must have in hd, and sd that you have on dish and see if fios has them. Really depends on what you want, not the number each of them throws around. For instance, if you like sports then fios will be better as the rsn is full time hd, and they have all the ESPN channels in HD. If you don't watch sports, then who cares. If you must have BBCA HD then don't get fios, they don't have it. Thats what we did, and BBC America was pretty much the only one we would miss from our package, but we also gained a bunch like MSNBC, others listed here, snice our package was Dish Latino Max. If you have AT250 then it will be different.

With the contract and no contract pricing, they are pretty much the same the first year, but you get one of those special offers if you sign a contract. The contract also locks in your price for the two years. But if you have no contract and the price increase is a lot, you can just leave. Maybe you can get a credit if you call up, leaves your options open. Or if they lose a channel you can leave, that's why we chose no contract.

In terms of comparing the DVRs, how do you expect them to tell you that? You have to use them in order to tell. Anyway, the new Dvrs for fios are very nice. They are fast and have the same user space for recordings as the hopper, I will post more on this later. How do they connect? through the router. I believe even if you don't get internet you still get a fios router to use moca. So you just need one cord to the box, you don't need an Ethernet cord, they speak to each other over the coax wire. and if you have more then one dvr you can watch recordings from any of them on any tv. the one thing you do need is good wires, if they are really old the boxes wont work. If your dish works then you will be fine, but we had one room that still had wire from the cox days, with dish it was used for a tv 2 out so it worked, i doubt it would have worked with dish otherwise. It did not work with fios and we had to split the room next door and run it to the second room, we will be putting it through the wall today ourselves as we did not want to pay $120 for them to do it. But the installer gave us the wire for it. The cost is $19.99 for the home dvr, you only need one and the other dvrs are then $15.99. The STB are 9.99 with discounts if you get more then one or one with a home dvr, they are for sd and hd, they don't have sd only boxes any longer. This is all on the website, just look around, with one home dvr and 2 stbs you get $6 off a month. Each one you add brings down the per box cost. And they seem high, and they are, but remember with dish you are also paying DVR fee, Home DVR fee, and the sevice plan. you don't have to pay that with fios, well you are, they are just built into the box prices. But I will say that with fios now being able to share across all tvs, and the stbs being able to set recordings, its a better setup than the dish hopper/joey since each stb still has a tuner and can watch live tv anytime.

And we were told even with a contract, unlike dish, you have 30 days to cancel with no ETF, so you don't have to do no contract and then try and get the contract savings, just do a contract from the get go if you want that and if you don't like it you can cancel within 30 days.

Apart from long waits to talk to someone which I also experienced with Dish, I have not found Fios CS horrible, its not great but no company is really great all the time. The techs are usually good, but you can get a not so great one just like with dish. We had one guy say he put an order for a new 211k and it never showed up. Called back and it never showed it, we never out it. We had a port failure on the DPP44 switch but did not lose any channels, because they had mirrored the Spanish channels on 72, we had 61.5, 72, 110 and 119. 119 no longer worked. I figured this out on my own by switching the cords around and seeing that 119 worked while on port 3 but not port 4, so it was the switch, not the lnb. The CSR told us we would be fine it did not matter if one port was bad. My brother, without telling me had really bad reception and drop outs for 6 months. I always wondered why he said he hated dish, i never had those problems, lol. Turns out they should have changed out the switch, and by that time I had gotten rid of the service plan so I had to re add it or pay $95. Frankly I was tired and did not put up a fight, but they should have fixed it for free because of the first CSR was dead wrong, I should have left right there and then. But yeah, I would not paint dish CS as great, lol.

But you really can't expect a csr to answer all those questions, if you were moving to dish you would just have as a hard a time getting that info. check out the review of the new guide to get an idea of the dvr interface.
 
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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. Are 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.
 
Wow. I really went on a rant, didn't I? :eek: Sorry about that.

Thank you for so much information.

I had compared channels, but need to do it again. After someone pointed out that FiOS did in fact have the Cooking Channel, I discovered the FiOS list I was using was outdated. Must've done a Google instead of direct to the site. :eek:

So, do I understand this correctly? I could have a 7232 in the living room, and if I was happy with just the two tuners, I could have just a plain non-DVR STB in the bedroom. The interface would be the same on both boxes, and I could watch a DVR'd program on the plain non-DVR STB with full trick plays (pause, skip fwd/back)? And if I wanted more tuners, I could add another 7232 (but not a 7216) and both DVRs and the STB could watch programs from either DVR?

And could I hook up my Sony DHG-500 HD DVR for OTA & cable, and it would work with FiOS, but not for premiums or such, and at no extra charge from FiOS? Of course, it wouldn't be viewable from the other boxes. But I'd have the same box recording OTA and some Fios.

This is beginning to look better. I'm concerned that the EHDs cannot move from one DVR to the other on the same account, and that being locked to the one DVR means you've lost everything on the EHD when that DVR dies. But it might be an acceptable trade off.
 
I now see that "...cisco chs 435 currently being deployed for new installs in northern VA..."

Apparently the top Cisco and top Motorola boxes are equivalent. But you must be all one brand or the other.

But once again, I can't get channel packages or pricing, but I'm getting plenty of:
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Your browser sent a query this server could not understand.


Doesn't matter if it's FF or IE.

On Edit: They must be working on the site. I got to the channels listing, but it wouldn't display the PDF or print anything whatsoever. Maybe later.

If it's really $20 to replace my $110 Dish bill, I'm pretty sure to make the move. But I need to find out what the actual bill would be, after the discounts. And I think that $20 more doesn't include any boxes.
 
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