Verizon at Home

[#1]

From this morning’s Cablevision earnings call…

John Hodulik - UBS - Analyst
Thanks. Good morning. Tom, can you give us a sense for any help you guys might have gotten from the digital transition?And then a follow-up to the wireless question. It looks like Verizon is building out -- going to be adding WiFi to a lot of its bundles.  Does that, do you think, change the competitive landscape in any way going forward?

Tom Rutledge - Cablevision Systems Corporation – COO
Well, Verizon is a me-too kind of product. What we do, they tend to do. And I think that as long as we continue to offer the value proposition that we do with the quality of service that we do, that we will be successful.  When we did announce WiFi, they described it as a parlor trick, so I'm surprised they are actually going forward with it.

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Actually, it was their 101 mbps broadband service that I called a “parlor trick.”  I think we disparaged their WiFi service as being limited to a tiny part of the US while WiFi from Verizon is national.

As far as FiOS being a “me too” product…pulleeeze!  Verizon has more channels on the service including more HD channels – with 115 or more in every market – and more than twice the amount of Video on Demand titles as Cablevision, in both standard and high def.  Aside from that, it looks as though Cablevision didn’t notice a few FiOS firsts:

o    Truly searchable listings for TV and VOD
o    A media guide that searches all home media, not just TV show listings
o    Fast upload speeds
o    Facebook, Twitter, ESPN Fantasy Football on TV
o    Ability to show photos on the TV screen
o    Personal videos streamed to your TV
o    Multi-room DVR
o    Remote programming from Web or wireless phones

o    Online videos from blip.tv, Dailymotion and Veoh on TV

o    Fiber all the way to our customer's home, not just in the core of the network, giving users the best quality TV picture and sound, and the best broadband and the most reliable state-of-the-art service.

[#2]

More cheerleading, Eric. 

Don't tout your "front-running" services that do not work. 

Personal video streaming?  Although "active" is in essence a very early Beta product at this stage.  

Media Guide that searches ALL home media?  That's news to me.  I apologize if I've missed something, but this is the first time I've read about such a capability.  Where is that?  Not on MY system?  If you claim that Media Manager provides this, I beg to differ.  If you do not import a fiile into MM, it cannot be found using your MR-DVR.  And "ALL home medis" would refer to ALL of my DVRs and DVD players, and I'm pretty sure that I cannot search other DVRs or PCs or DVD players from the Media Guide.

Pretty much the ONLY thing Verizon FIOS has over the other providers is PQ and HD content.  In almost every other area of the basic services that cutomers have come to expect, Verizon FIOS is severely lagging.  Everything else is just adding new gimmicks (widgets, facebook access) while the basics are not being corrected.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE deal with the real issues, and tone down your marketing pitches.

Do you really believe that this is what we want to read?

[#3]

I want to read about IMG Guide DATA improvements, more DVR functionality (like TiVo), and more Multi Room DVR functionality such as being able to schedule and delete from a remote STB.

I think many of us here want more technical and concrete information and less cheerleading.  Many of us have direct questions and issues that are never answered or are given some stock answer.

This forum can be and should be a great place to get real answers to real questions.