I was at my brother in law house last week. He has fios. I watched the sd channels and the pq was amazing. The hd channels was also amazing. I have dish now and had DirecTV. I also have cablevision now and they are not close to the pq that fios has
I saw FIOS TV for the first time
- Thread starter Sean Mota
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Yep, people who love picture quality will appreciate FiOS. Of course, a lot of the programmers still produce a lot of terrible quailty upconverted/reformatted programming they call HD, but FiOS only passes along the signals they receive. Regardless, we're had the FiOS Triple-Play since March 2008 and the service is rock-star reliable...not one second of downtime in more than 4-years...and the fastest Internet available anywhere. It's too bad it takes both time and big $$$ to bury fiber...
Top 10 Multichannel Video Programming Distributors as a December 2011:
1 Comcast Corporation 22,343,000
2 DirecTV 19,880,000
3 Dish Network 13,967,000
4 Time Warner 12,061,000
5 Cox 4,761,000
6 Charter 4,325,000
7 Verizon (FiOS TV) 4,173,000
8 AT&T (U-Verse) 3,791,000
9 Cablevision 3,250,000
10 Bright House 2,092,000
Several of the Cable MVPDs have been bleeding customers...just look at Cablevision and Time-Warner since Verizon and AT&T come to their areas. Right now, I estimate that Verizon will report having around 4.6M video customers and AT&T around 4.4M in their 2nd quarter financials. Regardless, they will both overtake Cox and Charter as the 5th and 6th largest MVPDs by the end of the year. Quality and reliability do matter. Of course, will Verizon and AT&T (LTE?)ever be able to complete with D* and E* for all their rural customers? We shall see...
1 Comcast Corporation 22,343,000
2 DirecTV 19,880,000
3 Dish Network 13,967,000
4 Time Warner 12,061,000
5 Cox 4,761,000
6 Charter 4,325,000
7 Verizon (FiOS TV) 4,173,000
8 AT&T (U-Verse) 3,791,000
9 Cablevision 3,250,000
10 Bright House 2,092,000
Several of the Cable MVPDs have been bleeding customers...just look at Cablevision and Time-Warner since Verizon and AT&T come to their areas. Right now, I estimate that Verizon will report having around 4.6M video customers and AT&T around 4.4M in their 2nd quarter financials. Regardless, they will both overtake Cox and Charter as the 5th and 6th largest MVPDs by the end of the year. Quality and reliability do matter. Of course, will Verizon and AT&T (LTE?)ever be able to complete with D* and E* for all their rural customers? We shall see...
We have been extremely happy with FIOS TV. They are about to up their internet speeds too - this month.
I think I remember when you signed-up. Weren't you and your family a little concerned about the old Verizon DVR...and didn't you get a TivoHD?
I wish we could get FIOS here.
I want their new 300 MB Internet service too!!
Heck, I remember upgrading our Internet connection to full T-1 (1.544 Mbps) back in the mid-90s and though we were playing with fire...and we were serving 3000+ users. As nice as it sounds, I don't need 300 Mbps unless I start renting-out rooms to powerusers.
My girl has Fios in her house. She has a better HD tv than mine, but I do not notice any difference. I know my Fta HD feeds looked better than fios. But thats probably because the HD fta feed is in uncompressed
To keep the exact same setup I currently have with DirecTV (TV) and TWC (Ineternet), I will pay $20 more for FiOs TV/Internet bundle. This includes the 24 months of discounts with FiOs and my current discounts with DirecTV. If I do month to month instead of a 2 year contract I will be paying $138 instead of $123. This will be a lot more than Directv/twc combo.
Where they get you is the equipment fees.
Where they get you is the equipment fees.
That is the primary receiver. FiOs charges a fee for all receivers, not just the additional ones. This is one reason why they are so expensive. The additional receiver that says it is included was a waived fee because it was a standard HD box used with the Whole Home DVR. If I got any other box there would be a fee. And I would still have to pay a fee if I only used one box.
We call to renew our contract each year and Verizon keeps extending our one free DVR (it has been free since 2008). Plus, we have two Cablecards at $4 per device that we use in our Tivos. Our FiOS TV + Internet (and phone at one time) is about the same price as having Dish Network service alone. Of course, we never paid full price for Dish Network service either. Currently I'm paying $99 per month for the Comcast double-play (all channels including HBO, Starz, Sports, etc.) and 30 Mbps Internet - plus, I'm receiving a $20 discount and free 2nd Cablecard for 12-months. The bottom line is FiOS pricing is as good if not better than other options (especially when you bundle Internet and phone) and it certainly nice to have more choices. Others have had to lower their prices (usually in the form of 12/24 month promotions) because of FiOS and U-Verse, and many of the Pay TV services will offer unadvertised promotions and customer retention discounts...folks just need to ask.
If D* and TWC Internet work for you...that's great! As much as we enjoy FiOS service at our primary residence in TX, I'm with Comcast at my other residence in VA (I work in DC and fly home on the weekends) because they've stepped-up to the plate to offer me numerous discounts. In my case, D* would have to offer me the Premier package along with two free DVRs for $10 a month in order to save $5 per month and convince me to switch from Comcast. Why? Because I would lose all my Comcast discounts and wind-up having to pay a premium for their "Internet Only" customers ($64.99 per month for 30 Mbps).
Anyway, I would certainly call Verizon and ask them for a better deal.
Originally my son wanted the Tivo - he hated it and we all tried it and hated it. We have one of the original HD Dvr boxes, two of the new ones and one regular HD non dvr and we have absolutely no complaints. We got the 1.9 update soon after we went to FIOS so that probably made a difference. Honestly, we do not feel like we took a big step down from the Dish boxes we had.
Yeah, we didn't care for the old UI but 1.9 is certainly very nice...as good as anything currently out there.
We have the triple play and originally we were saving about $20 per month with all services taken into consideration. Now it is about even with what we were paying before. However, We are receiving more for our money on all three services as well. At 35/35 our internet is 3X what we had and will be increasing this month. We have FIOS Ultimate so we have Showtime, Cinemax, Epix included that we did not have before and we just had a basic landline before and we now have all the extra phone features. As I have said before, Dish served us well for 13+ years but it was time for a change and in our case it worked out extremely well.
FiOS's picture quality has a serious placebo effect going on.
There are very few channels on the service which truly look great. For most channels they are the same as any other provider. Most things are distributed as MPEG-4 or MPEG-2 at a low enough bitrate that Verizon has to re-encode the MPEG-4 feeds, losing quality; or in the case of a native MPEG-2 feed, most of them are 12 Mbps or less so the cable providers don't have to re-encode them to pack them 3 to a QAM.
HDNet and EPIX are the two which still look really good on FiOS. HDNet is still native MPEG-2 @ 17 Mbps and I think EPIX is MPEG-4 distributed but Verizon re-encodes it to MPEG-2 @ 17 Mbps as well so the quality loss is not as great.
The worst looking HD channels on FiOS include:
-AMC, Fuse, WeTV and the other Rainbow Media channels - all packed on the satellite transponder to fit 4 to a QAM; natively distributed as MPEG-2 at bitrates of 9 Mbps or less. Looks like crap on every provider including Verizon.
-Comcast's "NBC Universal" branded channels - MSNBC, CNBC, Syfy, Bravo - are now natively distributed @ 12 Mbps to allow providers to pack them 3 to a QAM without re-encoding. A macroblock mess on every provider.
-The Discovery Channel just looks terrible on FiOS for some reason. I don't know how it's being distributed these days but it's often as low as 10 Mbps 1080i MPEG-2 on FiOS. A horribly macroblocked channel. Interestingly, the Science Channel, another Discovery Communications network, looks very good to me. The bitrate is also higher - typically 15 Mbps.
-The Scripps channels - Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel - are truly horrendous. I think they are MPEG-4 distributed so you wouldn't think they'd look as bad as they do. Verizon must have some really bad, ancient MPEG-2 encoders running on these networks. I'm not the only one who thinks they look awful on FiOS.
I should also note that all the premium movie channels (besides EPIX which we have already covered) are either being sent as MPEG-2 around 12 Mbps or a MPEG-4 feed that Verizon is re-encoding to around 12 Mbps MPEG-2 to pack 3 to a QAM. Again, shouldn't be any quality improvement from any other provider here.
There are very few channels on the service which truly look great. For most channels they are the same as any other provider. Most things are distributed as MPEG-4 or MPEG-2 at a low enough bitrate that Verizon has to re-encode the MPEG-4 feeds, losing quality; or in the case of a native MPEG-2 feed, most of them are 12 Mbps or less so the cable providers don't have to re-encode them to pack them 3 to a QAM.
HDNet and EPIX are the two which still look really good on FiOS. HDNet is still native MPEG-2 @ 17 Mbps and I think EPIX is MPEG-4 distributed but Verizon re-encodes it to MPEG-2 @ 17 Mbps as well so the quality loss is not as great.
The worst looking HD channels on FiOS include:
-AMC, Fuse, WeTV and the other Rainbow Media channels - all packed on the satellite transponder to fit 4 to a QAM; natively distributed as MPEG-2 at bitrates of 9 Mbps or less. Looks like crap on every provider including Verizon.
-Comcast's "NBC Universal" branded channels - MSNBC, CNBC, Syfy, Bravo - are now natively distributed @ 12 Mbps to allow providers to pack them 3 to a QAM without re-encoding. A macroblock mess on every provider.
-The Discovery Channel just looks terrible on FiOS for some reason. I don't know how it's being distributed these days but it's often as low as 10 Mbps 1080i MPEG-2 on FiOS. A horribly macroblocked channel. Interestingly, the Science Channel, another Discovery Communications network, looks very good to me. The bitrate is also higher - typically 15 Mbps.
-The Scripps channels - Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel - are truly horrendous. I think they are MPEG-4 distributed so you wouldn't think they'd look as bad as they do. Verizon must have some really bad, ancient MPEG-2 encoders running on these networks. I'm not the only one who thinks they look awful on FiOS.
I should also note that all the premium movie channels (besides EPIX which we have already covered) are either being sent as MPEG-2 around 12 Mbps or a MPEG-4 feed that Verizon is re-encoding to around 12 Mbps MPEG-2 to pack 3 to a QAM. Again, shouldn't be any quality improvement from any other provider here.
I still don't understand why someone would need a 300mbit connection in your home. Maybe for the fools running torrents and stuff all the time for pirated movies.
Unfortunately now in this day, it's all about the monthly cap, not the speed. As with most providers speeds you could blow through your cap in a few days running at 100% of your speed.
Unfortunately now in this day, it's all about the monthly cap, not the speed. As with most providers speeds you could blow through your cap in a few days running at 100% of your speed.
I am glad we have no caps with any of our providers here. This is probably because competition is so great. We have FiOS which offers plans that can go up to 150/35, TWC which offers plans that can go up to 50/5, and several DSL options. Because of this, companies are reluctant to cap their subs for fear of them going elsewhere.
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