Verizon FiOS TV – User Comments

I have Dish Network & have been thrilled witht eh HD DVR set up. I’m looking into FiOS for cost reasons, but the DVR only has 17 hours capacity vs my 30 hours on Dish. Also if I record on HD I can still watch it in SD on my 2nd TV. My 2nd tv can program recordings where as with FiOS it doesn’t. I can also pause live TV on my 2nd TV. I’m not sure I’m ready to give these features up. Anybody have a comment?

Does anyone know how the program selection on Fios On Demand compares to Comcast? We love watching AMC’s Mad Men whenever we want on On Demand. Does Fios also carry that?

Just got the FIOS $99.99 much advertised TV,PHONE, INTERNET bundle
installed today and thought I’d pass on my reviews.

First of all I had been using DISH TV an very satisfied, when the FIOS bundle price
dropped to $99.99 I finally gave in and switched. I was really excited about this price and really wanted this to work out. I was paying about $150 a month for DISH TV HD,
phone an internet and I think that is way too much for this crap.

I have a 52″ SONY XBR in one room an regular TVs in the other rooms in various sizes.

So Here is the comparisons:

1) Picture Quality
I was absolutely stunned and disappointed at how bad FIOS Picture quality was on NON HD
channels on initial viewing. My gosh,I was asking the Installer what was wrong with the
Pic when the first picture came on after we got it up and running. (he just said it
wasnt HD, duh!) Pitures were very soft and text blurry . Color was oversaturated and
bleeding having to turn back down the color only then it looked bland with no vibrant
color. Annoying pixelation that came and went. HD pic on the other hand was very good and was feeling better when more pixelation would flair up. It didn’t happen all the time, but enough times to become annoying just like on the regular digital. The thing is, I “NEVER” can recall ever in 5 or so years with DISH ever having these problems. I really didnt even know what Pixelation was exactly until I tried the FIOS. Had some friends over who helped me do a very fair blind pic quality test. Where I switched back and forth from DISH to FIOS on the same channel, both on HDMI connections with people told to turn their heads when switching back an forth. We also viewed it on different TVs. (yes, they are still m y friends after this.
lol) On the NON HD channels, the DISH beat FIOS hands down. Not even close! Everyone
could guess the better DISH picture everytime. DISH was that much better. On the HD channels, it was a different story. FIOS was very close and we all agreed was acceptable, however, for some reason, the HD channels on DISH were still slightly better. About 70% of the time, everyone would guess the DISH HD pic as the best but everyone agreed, it very close. Your area may have different results, I’m in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

2) No one liked the FIOS guide. They have some magnified pane that takes up half the

screen on the channel its highlighting and is annoying to read. From reading the other posts, it looks unanimous. No actor info, etc, or star ratings. DISH TV has got it right. Much easier to see whats on, navigate and more info.

3)Love the lighted remote on the FIOS DVR.
DVR was also very easy to use. never had to read any instructions and it worked great
and yes, u could record on one channel and watch another one just like DISH TV tivo.
Only 2 hours though on HD record time for the $99.99 offer.

4) not impressed at all with sound quality on the FIOS music channels. Not impressed
with DISH TV ether. Not even Sirius. None of them sound good. Poor stereo separation
makes it sound almost monaural.

5)The FIOS High Speed Internet was fantastic! Just about any web page will appear as soon as u hit the enter button. Speed tests revealed a little faster then the 10 mb they advertised.

6) free long distance and full featured phone with this deal which was great.

Conclusions: I would only recommend the FIOS TV if your planning to go all HD channels

as the NON HD channels picture quality is not acceptable for me. You will have to

upgrade though from the $99.99 to get the extra channels.you get very few HD channels

with this special, SO I’m not sure it would be worth it by then. I have since dropped

the FIOS TV and kept the High speed Internet 10/2 and phone for $70 for one year.
Probably going to go with DISH HD turbo as they are giving out better and better
offers. By the way, forgot to say, but the whole install process was top notch. Thumbs up!

Very nice overview. I am a FiOS TV customer and I am loving it. You nmight have already noticed/posted they have added additional widgets…Traffic, Fantasy Football, Horoscope. In addition with their Multi-room DVR, they added Web-based DVR & parental controls. You can control parental access and recording schedules online (what a great feature it is). For now they are offering it free, here in Texas, not sure if they’d make it a paid service in future. Also they added additional HD channels with a new package called HD Extreme.
This product is phenomenal and I wish them good luck. I wish they take care of some of the issues with customer experience….I assume they are going thru growth pains and working on fixing their operations.

Thanks for all the great info folks. I have a couple HD boxes which I will continue to pay for monthly. But, I have a couple (brown) analog boxes on a couple of the tv’s that are not used much. I hate paying $5.00 monthly for the analog boxes. Anyone know which, if any channels I would get if I simply plug the coax into the tv? AND what will happen in February 2009 in this scenario? I’ve seen the $30,00 (Feb 2009) boxes in drug stores. Can I get one of them and still get some basic/ standard channels for these TV’s that aren’t used much?

Thank you very much!

I signed up for Fios after being somewhat disappointed in Brighthouse. Verizon was so incredibly incompetent you wouldn’t believe it. The scheduled to set this service up 5 times, came out once 4 hours late and just couldn’t get to first base. The CSR was so bad I just gave up. I never called back, and neither did I. They left all of there equipment at my house and it’s still there.

My neighbor went through worse. They actually got it installed and he fought for a month to get rid of it.

What a fiasco!

I have all three FIOS services, including the Extreme HD option. Overall I am very satisfied with the service. Initially, I tried to hang on to my copper wire telephone service for as long as I could. This was only that ordinary telephones do not need power to work. I know FIOS offers a battery backup, but it is not very long. Eventually I gave in and I keep my cell phone fully charged.

The FIOS service is good, although there billing system sucks. This not a complaint about personnel, just their archaic systems. For example, they had not passed on a discount due at start of contract. There was not method for applying it afterwards. So they gave me the full 12 months discount on one months statement. This was appreciated as it saved me calling each month. Always check your statement. Mistakes do happen, especially when you add or change a service.

My real pet hate is being unable to backup a few recordings from the hard drive. Now and again equipment fails and needs replacing. When you replace you lose all your recordings. Currently my Motorola requires a cold start to work. (pull the power out and reconnect). I know this is fixed in a newer model, but to change, I lose my recordings.

If anyone as found a way to backup your favourite recordings, please let me know.

I have had Fios for 3 months now I love the service, but the billing is the biggest headache I have ever had with any kind of service! This is how this works for me I get the statement in the mail look at it find all of the old erroneous charges then look through and find all of the new charges that they have added coming from who knows where. Once this process is complete call verizon and spend any where from 30 minutes to 2 hours on the phone with them to get the bill adjusted. Oh not to mention the 6 hours and 17 minutes total spent on the phone the first month! Once they have adjusted all of the charges I wait and see next months bill to see what hasn’t come off. I am actually on the phone with them right now and found out that I have been getting charged twice for internet, how nice! Word to the wise if you want get internet and tv service use it, but you may have to spend alot of time on the phone with these people to get your bill straight!

I have had Cablevision triple-play for years and was happy with it. Recently bought an HD LCD tv to replace a tv that died. I AM NOT HAPPY now when I switched on 3/20/09 to FIOS. In comparing the HD channels (which do seem to out-number Cablevision’s): they are probably equally good; but, the non-HD channels on FIOS are bland and fuzzy, while I had really good quality thru Cablevision (even on my 14 year old set). I also cannot “timeshift” record from the FIOS box DIRECTLY onto a VCR (on which I make tapes for my mother to watch in her home, so recording only onto the DVR is of no use, and a pain to then record from the DVR onto the VCR – which does work). FIOS was very nice to offer me a “free” (at least for the 1st year) replacement of the standard box with a DVR – but that doesn’t work. Today I spoke with a tech person who actually understood the problem (the other techies and installer didn’t) – he told me that the DVR does not transmit the signal beyond the box except onto the TV(i.e. into any auxiliary set-up like the VCR) and suggested that I use a TIVO. I do not have TIVO, and I really didn’t want to buy one (I never record for myself anymore – only for my 90 year old mother)! FIOS, clearly desperate to keep another customer, has kindly offered to give me a monthly rebate for 6 months to more than cover the cost of buying a TIVO.

So, I have a question or two: Will replacing the DVR with TIVO really work? Is there anything special I need to know, or do, to make it work (I have no special knowledge of electronics, etc.)? And, when I complained about the quality of non-HD channels, I was told that’s the way it is, they don’t “enhance” them. Is this true – because my Cablevision experience with non-HD was quite good (and of course it’s non-HD that I mostly videotape for mom (you know, TCM).

Both Cablevision and FIOS are making very attractive offers to me to keep me as a customer,and I would prefer to make a decision within the 15 day trial period, although Cablevision has even offered to pay the early cancelation fees. Of course, the more I think about it, the more unhappy I am with the quality of the non-HD channels. HELP – need advice quickly. Thanks alot, Elyse

I switched from Dish to Fios. Every thing is about the same except the TV Guide. Dish got it right and fios gets a “F” They dont rate their movies. Their descriptions are not informative. Example: On Food Network the general desctiptions are “Food cooked by Chef Blank” or Movies descriptions that sometimes don’t even tell you what the movie is about. They have no ratings so I don’t know if it was a good movie and they don’t tell you if there is violence or nudity.

They don’t tell you when the eposides firt aired and the DVR doesn’t even know the difference. I set my DVR to run “first run” eposides and I continuly get repeats. A huge pain. Everyone complains but they are unwilling to change.

can anyone give me feedback on fios’ dvr capability? i have comcast now, and want to switch to fios. but someone told me that the fios dvr is hard to use, and not very good… anyone with expereince ?

I switched from DISH to FIos and regret it. I have the Home Media HD DVR so that I can watch recorded programs on my second TV. This worked great with DISH. With, FIOS, the set top box with intermittently crash, often enough that it becomes a real hastle, which requires a hard reboot. Happens every day, within the first hour of watching TV. I called Verizon and it’s a known bug and a patch is not coming out for two months. Also, the functionality and performance of the DISH remote and set top box in my opinion is much better. I plan on switching back either in one year after my agreement or earlier if I can get out of it.

The FIOS service itself is suburb (probably best around) — but their customer service is TERRIBLE!!! I would ***NOT*** reccommend FIOS to anyone! I have been begging them to send me a bill to my correct address for six months and they still have NEVER sent me anything. Now they’ve turned off my service! The online billing center does not work correctly so that’s not a option either. NOT worth the hassle.

Why bother? Phones, to me, have become a thing of the past. I haven’t had an actual hard line for years now and with cell phone technology expanding and coverage improving I’m hard pressed to see this as a selling point. I suppose if you still have a traditional phone service it may be appealing. I’ve had Dish and Direct and was happy with both. I have DirecTV now because of the NFL package. They also have some nicely functioning HD-DVRs, are pretty well priced, and rarely lose any reception. Internet through a local cable company is generally very fast and seldom if ever runs into problems. Sure, you pay 2 different bills but is that really a big deal? I set my auto payment up and the bank pays it every month so that’s not really a big deal. Seems like much ado about nothing so long as you aren’t tied down to a real phone line.

I am considering switching from DishNetwork but I have to tell you, I love Dish’s remote. I love that it is on a UHF signal. I have played with friends FIOS remote and found that you have to be pointing it right at the box. Have others that have switched found this to be a problem? Is there an upgrade available on FIOS to use UHF for the remote?

We just swtiched from Comcast to Verizon Fios yesterday. We ended up with four different boxes. I believe they are all Motorola. A non-HD/DVD STB. A non-DVR HD. A non-HD DVR. And the simple (small) digital box for the kitchen. The tech said we would receive NO channels on a TV wihtout a box of some kind. I have not tested that yet.

Anyway, is there an easy way to determine the model numbers of the STB’s? The only place I found it on one was on a sticker on the underside. Stupid me, I did not write it down.

Have had Fios phone and internet for years. No problems.
Added tv as a triple bundle recently.
Problem: Since adding the fios tv my internet speed is much slower than before adding tv. Any suggestions?

I notice that most questions on here now go unanswered, in the past there was usually someone who could help.

Thanks.

Verizon has innformation on their site that states that cablecards are supported.

ALSO, is Verizon offering a static IP option or just plain and simple DHCP/PPPoE

How can I by pass the Motorola QIP2500-3 and hook directly to my Sharp EDTV?