An Open Letter to Verizon: Fix Your DVRs

[tns]

Can't agree with most of your letter.

1. Macroblocking and frame loss just like watching a poorly tuned satellite dish in a rain storm.

Get your system checked out.  Somethings is wrong, probably before it reaches the dvr

2. Pixelation seen in overly compressed low quality data streams.

Same as one.  Except for a few progam providers who are providing lousy signals to everyone, Fios channels are not overly compressed by Verizon.

3. Slow or completely unresponsive remote control functionality that freezes or hangs up for many seconds before suddenly responding to the last several commands pressed on the remote.

Apparently a recent problem such as this is true in some areas.  Its being worked on.  I only see maybe one such delay every few weeks.  Saw it frequently with various Dish DVR's.

4. Very small hard drive sizes seen in non-HD DVRs; being used in "HD" DVRs to provide only a few hours of recording time.

They worked on it alright.  SD DVR's are no longer being manufactured, and almost never given out.  Switch to one of the newer larger HD DVR.

5. Despite using SATA interface technology, poor data throughput from drive storage internal and external to the DVR.  Almost completely unable to handle recording to and playing from the external drive over eSATA when Dish Network does it over USB 2.0 with no signal loss, viewing issues, or DVR reboots resulting in the loss of a recording.

Dish networks solution is different and interesting.  They do not record to the External discs over USB.  Instead they allow you to request an archive to the disc of a program already recorded.  Verizon Fios solution instead tries to use it as the primary drive.

6. Minimal functionality available in VOD mode.  Play and Stop seemingly as the only options and playback that is stopped cannot resume where the viewing left off.

The limited functionality is at the program provider's insistance.  Some programs have full functionality.  Not sure why it cannot alway resume where it left off (it works most of the time but not always, and they are aware of this and working on it.)

7. Rudimentary recording functionality that is unable to resolve recording conflicts and ensure that recordings occur later where a conflict has occured.

Never had a problem here, but then I always check to see that the day's scheduled programs are up.  A habit I got into with DISH because I often had problems with them.  Possibly due to the guide info provider (FYI), and I'll agree they might do better to dump FYI and get another source.

8.  Complete inability to roll out patches, fixes, and updates on a nationwide basis; requiring a full year to accomplish something all other providers do in at most one month.

The last rollout of patches occured exactly on schedule, and in roughtly two months.  Yeah the previous one took about 7 months (Only over a year of you count the Beta they decided to do).  Complicated by one restart after a number of serious problems were reported, one strike, and a couple of delays while network changes not related to the update had to occur.

[doropallo]

I agree with OP on many topics, coming from Dish that had 3 tuners I thought I could make up the difference with VOD, but that is mostly a joke.  I know it is the provider that mandates it, but not allowing a user to fast forward and keeping the show at an hour is ridiculous, that is why I would just record it if I had an open tuner.  Fast forwarding with a visible commercial means you still see it, recording it and using the 30 second skip means I don't.  How stupid.  Both Dish and Direct are coming out with 1TB DVRs and more tuners, so the useless VOD really isn't attractive, when it works.  Can't count how many times we tried to use but our request couldn't be processed at the time, after spinning for a minute or two.  Some state of the art network.