Home audio & video: Verizon Fios TV
Cool!
by kena10 - 6/1/06 10:44 PM In reply to: FIOS in Mass by jesiop1I talked to the verizon rep on the phone and she said tha the copper phone lines would just plug into the new box. From what I've seen so far, this box is like a jack of all trades box in the aspect that it brings in a fiber line and then everything else plugs into the box.
The rep also said that the existing copper lines would remain in the house and also the phone line would remain as "analog". That was and remains a big concern for me since I have no desire whatsoever to switch over to voip service for my phone. A friend of mine had vonage and I could tell the difference when I would talk to him on the phone. All the echo and sometimes they would call and their calls would drop. Other times the calls would I simply could not hear them on my end but they could hear me on theirs.
As I'm sure the voip technology is going to get better and perfected with time, it simply isn't there. I like the fact that I can pick up my phone and call someone when there's a power outage.
can tell the difference between bud light and miller light
by GodWish - 12/1/08 11:10 AM In reply to: Cool! by kena10I guess what you are talking doesn't make any sense, analog phones and voip phone , this is a first time i have seen a guy who is pushy about phone service , I can say you are completely jobless who wants to boost his or her own ego by saying "I alaways use analog phone bla blah blah",, Talk something that will make sense, talk about the service , about teh change that you can see in your home after buying fios not some useless talk.
FIOS Update 2 (more like a concern)
by kena10 - 6/1/06 11:14 PM In reply to: Verizon Fios TV by kena10Hi everyone,
As the date gets near, I have been thinking about a concern of mine introduced by one of the responses I read on this thread.
As some of the folks who read this thread and who have been helpful and encouraging in my decision to switch to FIOS, I have been thinking about the connectivity to the pc's in my office from a connection perspective.
Since the "box" deems necessary that a Cat5 line is sent to the the modem/router for the high speed connection, that represents a problem for me.
As I have expressed before, I live in a townhouse, and the coax lines are all in the back of the house. Since there is a line that goes directly into my home office, I have a dedicated data connection (coax line)for that room alone. I know what some of you are thinking, a coax line can supply both at the same time, and that is correct. The only thing is that there are no tv's in that room and the cable guy isolated the line in the back of the house so it would handle data alone (or so he said).
I would be extremely happy if and when Verizon comes to my place, they simply attach that coax line to their box and be done with it. However, from what I've gathered, the high speed connection needs to be attached to the router verizon supplies you with (or any router for that matter) through a cat5 connection, which kind of makes sense since the box itself is acting as the modem, thus eliminating the need for a coax connection.
My question is, can this be done? Meaning connecting my existing coax line for the pc room to the verizon fios box as opposed to having to run a cat5 line to that room? I guess I really don't want to compromise the aesthetics of the inside of my home by having them run a line from my family room all the way to my home office which is at the other end of the basement. Call me picky, whatever ya'll like but I just don't want to have to deal with extra headaches.
The other thing is that I'm going to be as anal as possible when they attemp to even touch my tv. For those of you who are wondering what tv I have, it's the sxrd 60". With that said, I'm so anal about people touching it that not even my wife dares to touch it. The only thing she does is turn it on with the remote from 12 feet away. I've read many horror stories about what people do when they don't know how to use something that my wife will even call me if I'm not home and ask me how to do something. When somehing like that happens, she knows to go upstairs and use the 36" xbr in the bedroom. As far as having the FIOS guy or girl touch it, um, hell no.
I've read a horror story about someone having their hdmi plug rammed into the port in the back of their lcd tv by a verizon guy, so that my friends, ain't happening. I believe it has caused that guy's tv to malfunction. Call me paranoid but damn, that's just not right.
what do ya'll think?
Jimmy
(NT) Install
by jesiop1 - 6/2/06 3:31 AM In reply to: FIOS Update 2 (more like a concern) by kena10My install was Verizon running all the lines into the house from the outside and then making a conection. just like they would runa a new telephone or cable line. They hooked it all up and gave a wireless router also for the internet. we do not have the TV yet in the area so i dont know how they would do it. and as for hooking up the TV i would let them they have insurance, i dont think they would were rough and i worked with them on touching my stuff. so was not a issue. for me
FIOS Update
by buddyluv - 6/2/06 12:55 PM In reply to: FIOS Update 2 (more like a concern) by kena10My sentiments exactly,I too have the Sony 60 XBR1.I don't want anyone touching it without me being there INCLUDING MY WIFE!!!!!!
I'm really interested in FIOS system,Time Warner Cable is highway robbery.My Bill is`about $170.00 per month including Road Runner internet service.Sound&Vision did article on FIOS May 2006 edition page 16 they had high praise of system.As of yet they are not in my section of NY.Anyone in NY who has it please reply.
Last thing did anyone read June Sound&Vision magazine they said Toshiba HD-XA1 DVD player was the BEST HI-DEF PICTURE THEY HAVE EVER SEEN!!!!!.
LET the games begin
Fios Update #3
by kena10 - 6/3/06 2:42 AM In reply to: Verizon Fios TV by kena10So I was watering the plants in the patio this afternoon when I noticed something very interesting...
When the subcontractors that Verizon hired to come and do the fiber run from the multiplexer to my house did their job, I never saw the actual fiber cable anywhere, and didn't pay much mind to it as I thought that they had placed it somewhere.
When I looked at the A/C unit while watering the plants, I noticed that on the wall there was a spool of cable (I'm thiking that they left a slack of about 15' of fiber cable) neatly placed on the electric box. As I kept on looking I even noticed that the end cap was already finished and ready to be plugged into the fios box when it comes on monday.
It was kinda nice to see that there, and it kinda surprised me that I hadn't really noticed it until now, especially since I tend to notice almost everything around me.
As soon as everything gets done on Monday (provided that I have conectivity as well, lol), I'll let you guys know how everything went.
Jimmy
Verizon FIOS, the Final Update!
by kena10 - 6/7/06 11:17 AM In reply to: Verizon Fios TV by kena10So, the day came and here's my report....
Here goes...
On Monday, the FIOS data tech called my house letting me know that he was on his way and was also asking for more detailed directions to get to my place. After giving him directions I proceeded to ask him a couple of questions regarding the way he was going to run his cat 5 cable to my home office and he went over a couple of scenarios that could happen. He was quite confident at the fact that he was going to be able to make his run without leaving the cable looking too conspicuous around the perimeter of the house.
When the installer arrived, I proceeded to meet him in the back of the house. I then proceeded to show him what cox had done in the past to run the coax line to my office from the other side of the house. Basically, my home office sits in the front part of the basement (with a window facing the street), while the cable line and every coax line coming from the house meets in the back of the house just behind my A/C unit.
He then requested asked me to see where the home office was and I took him to it. When we got there, he noticed the coax jack and he asked how it came into the room and I took him to the adjacent room (the laundry room) and showed him where the line came from. Once he saw that, he was extremely confident and at ease that he wasn't going to have to do much to get the cat5 cable through. He used the existing line and taped a nice long run of cat 5 to the end so he could pull it back and at he other end (outside, in the back of the house), he taped the cat5 and power wires that he was going to need for his run.
I must say that I was quite impressed at how proficient and positive he was about getting his job done. I have never encountered a person that was so willing to accommodate my wishes from an aesthetics perspective. He treated my home as if it were his own (wearing covers over his shoes so he wouldn't damage my new carpet, being careful not to step on my wife's newly planted flowers, etc.).
From the beginning he was pretty sure that he was going to spend the majority of his day at my home and he was not rushing to get out of there or do things half assed. He would take his time to explain things to me as he was moving along or every time I had a question about something. He also advised me that he might have to leave the old telephone box where it was so he could tap into it. Since I really didn't have a problem with that, the box remained where it is. He proceeded to mount the new ONT right below the windows and proceeded to make the necessary connections. Once he finished that, inside the laundry room, he mounted the backup battery so it wouldn't be seen anywhere (like I said earlier, this guy treated my house as if it were his own). When he was finished doing his connections the video guy showed up (like around 2ish, pretty late if you ask me). While the data guy was finishing up, the video guy started to bring his equipment in to make the necessary connections to the ONT (Optical Network Terminal). In my opinion, the video guys have it easy in some aspects, since the data guys are the ones who do most of the work.
Remember my concerns about the video guy touching my beloved SXRD? Well, he didn't touch it (thank goodness) but I did tell him about what I read about that dud who got his 40" bravia's hdmi port damaged. He was pretty surprised to say the least but, at the same time he was confident that he knew what he was doing. He did provide me with an hdmi cable (which was quite nice of him) to connect the dvr to my sxrd (I will be going over the good stuff soon, read on...).
He then went upstairs and hooked up the hd box to my 36" xbr in my room and to the other tv in the other room. As with the data guy, this guy was wearing covers on his shoes so he wouldn't damage the carpet (I really appreciated that).
While all that was happening, I was running from the upstairs to the downstairs because I needed to get some things set up for the high speed service. The data guy walked me through the setup process and it was kind of effortless. I really didn't get to figure out specific things about the DLink wireless router they gave me, but no matter. When we had finished setting up the router, I asked him if I could piggyback my old linksys into his and use it to keep my existing wireless network intact without having to make serious changes to the configuration, and he said that he wasn't sure. We got the wireless running in the house and I have to tell you that I'm very impressed with the transfer rates. It seems that the speed is quick and it doesn't take as long as cox used to take to load up pages and surf overall, so I was quite happy. On an interesting note, the data guy told me that Verizon is looking into doing away with the 5mb package and offering the 15mb package at the same price or the 5mb package to compete with the cable companies since 5mb is not that fast these days.
When he was done I went back to the video guy and he started to go over the channels and the programming features of the dvr in the basement. I do have a couple of issues with the Motorola boxes. First, there aren't as many options in the settings menu of the box itself (while it's on anyway) to tell the box what you want. Features like a timer would be nice. We used to have our Scientific Atlanta box on a timer in our bedroom so it would come on every morning at 5am and turn itself off at 8am. This is not possible with the Motorola boxes. Another issue is that when you turn your volume up, it should turn the tv's volume up and not the cable box, yeah this is called "fixed audio" in the Sci. Atl boxes and it's not possible to do with these boxes unless you go through the actual remote settings. Lastly, I wish the "Aspect" button on the remote would allow the box to change the aspect ratio on the image. As of now, you can't do that, so if you're watching SD channels, you either have to change the settings so that they're stretched all the time or they're left in their original format. Again, cox's remote would allow you to change this setting while watching tv, so that would be helpful.
In order to fix the audio so every time you turn the volume up you're only turning the tv volume and not having to turn the volume of the box and the tv at the same time, you have to hold the tv source button until it goes through a blinking sequence. Once that occurs, you have to hit the "volume +" button and it should lock the volume for the tv. You have to do the same for the cable box, and when that's done, your volume should be fixed. Through trial and error, I found that when you turn the tv on and, with the cable box turned off, if you hit the menu button on the control once, it brings up a setup screen that you can make extra changes to. From telling the box what kind of output you want (480, 1080i, etc.) to what kind of connection you're using (hdmi, dvi, etc.). All this sounds like a lot but, believe me, there are a lot of features I wish Motorola included in this box that simply aren't there.
So now, for the good part... The video quality of the FIOS service is pretty good. I believe the compression they are using is MPEG4 so they have a lot of room to add more channels. The audio part is quite loud. For those of us who own SXRD tv's, the audio coming out of the tv's speakers is pretty low and non-pronounced. I noticed a drastic change in that when the box was plugged into the tv via hdmi. I no longer had to turn the volume up so high. When watching tv without my surround sound system, I can turn the volume up to 15 and it's pretty loud. I did have to go and tweak the video settings on the tv a little bit to get the best image possible (nothing too fancy, mainly just reducing the sharpness and stuff since I accidentally turned off my monster powerbar and it reset the settings on the tv, so that's why I had to tweak the settings. Had I not turned it off, I wouldn’t have needed to change anything.
Nevertheless, the video quality is very impressive. The images are nice and clean, there is no noise (unless you're watching SD on the big screen) and you see more pixelation due to the SD limitations. HD however, is a whole different issue. For starters, Verizon has a bunch of HD channels that Cox doesn't offer. Given the fact that I'm subscribing to every movie channel avail, I've got a ton of channels to watch. Verizon has the national geographic channel in hd which you can't get from cox, nor do they have cinemax in hd and a few other channels.
I haven't tried the dvr feature but I've read on the net that some people were having issues with the dvr function recording hd signals. Some people claimed that the dvr would only allow them to record in hd for 2 hours tops. I think that might have been fixed because the boxes I have got a different version number (I guess it might be a new revision, who knows).
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the service. I'm getting more channels than I had before, and it's all coming in bundled into one bill. I think the cable companies are going to have a tough time trying to beat this service if it goes nationwide. We can only wait and see what happens.
Jimmy
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