Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
TVee
Newbie

@vinnyv07 wrote:

- IMG 1.6.0 breaks the Home Media DVR.  "Unable to Locate Hub" messages just make me cringe.

- HD-DVR (motorola 6xxx) requires frequent reboots due to random lockups.

- Remote DVR playback sometimes gets confused and automatically starts back at the beginning of show.

- Guide is frequently incorrect or just too vague.

- I feel a little bit duped that Verizon releases all of these new "HD" channels, but now I have to upgrade my HD package *again* to view them.

- HD-DVR randomly resets itself during recording, so some shows are split in two.

- VOD (Video On Demand) only works when it feels like it.  Either rebooting router or STB will only fix it, but still annoying.

- HD-DVR fills up way to quickly.  Would really like the option for more storage!!! 

  I'm still amazed that Verizon hasn't released a fix for the "Unable to Locate Hub" bug.  That would be a Priority 1 bug in my book.  I'm not sure what to do at this point. 

Talk about a post that is right on the money!! I ......................


I suh-WARE  I though it was ME!   As a relative newbie to FIOS I was sure I was doing something wrong -- I'm not sure if it's good or NOT that it's not me?   ;(

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
ManiacDan
Newbie

Like many people, I'm happy with the general "watching TV" portion of FiOS, but if anything at all goes wrong it's weeks of frustration and screaming calls to technicians who insist I must be doing something wrong. 

Also, I'd like to chime in and say how much I hate the Video On Demand.  $5 for a blurry, full-screen movie with intermittent sound and video is horrible.  ESPEICALLY when the preview of the movie is in widescreen HD, and the actual movie itself is worse than VCR quality.  Case in point: I ordered Get Smart last weekend after seeing it advertised (in clear widescreen) on the verizon commercials that get injected into normal programming.  When I purchased the movie, not only was it terrible quality and full screen instead of widescreen, but I had to restart it twice because the sound and/or picture cut out.

As for the rest of the service, the picture on the HD channels is great, and there's an extensive HD lineup.  Also, your remote control isn't broken, it really does take 10 seconds for the box to respond to commands. 

I haven't had the "unable to locate hub" issue that many people have complained about, but I don't have a multi-room DVR.  I DO Have a hard drive that fills up with a single evening of HD content if I'm not careful.  It would be nice if we could put our own hard drives into the boxes, or archive some of the content.

One last point:  If you call Verizon to ask about the presence of certain features, always follow it up with "and does it WORK?"  I ordered a certain model of DVR specifically because it had front inputs that I was going to use for my camcorder.  However, when I asked the CSR if the front inputs were present on the model I was ordering, I forgot to ask if they did anything.  A lot of the ports you see on the DVRs don't do anything at all, so if you're calling for A/V inputs, firewire, etc., make sure you ask if your feature is actually hooked up to something. 

-Dan

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
jat454
Enthusiast - Level 3

I've had FiOS for 3 dayd now and so far like it better than Comcast. With Comcast I was getting pixelation and droputs which after 4 visits they were never able to fix. Plus it was just getting too expensive.

The FiOS is alot different as far as the channel lineup and how the guide works..just a matter of getting used to it I guess. I have to say that the picture is better than Comcast HD. The colors really seem to pop, even my wife noticed it. What I don't like is that you have to have a box for every TV, which they didn't tell me about. With Comcast I had 3 boxes plus 2 tvs plugged directly to the cable. Plugging the cable directly into the tv doesn't work with FiOs, now I have to rent 2 more boxes at 3.99 ea.

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
Nready4primtime

Going back to Cablevision as soon as the contract is up, even though Cablevision says it will pay any broken-contract fees Verizon may charge.

Verizon service sucks.  Takes 2-3 days to fix what Cablevision used to fix in just hours, such as outages and DVR box problems. 

Billing problems all over the place and you have to go through voice-mail hell to find a live person to straighten them out.

The only thing Verizon does well is the Fios Internet.  It is pretty fast and comes with a wireless router at no extra charge.  But all the other aggravation is just not worth it.

So, after nearly 2 years, I give up.  Verizon has too many problems to work out before it becomes my TV provider.  And since I like keeping Telephone and Internet together with the same provider, they are going to lose those, too.

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
vzsteve123
Newbie

I was happy then unhappy. Is there anyone out there that can answer my question regarding compression artifacts that occur on screen. Do you see in intense frames like flash photography or concert strobe lights a macro-blocking effect that degrades the picture quality like a bad jpeg movie for the amount of time that there is action on the screen and then return back to normal HD with no artifacts with still or no action scenes? If you know what you looking at when it comes to picture quality you would cancel like I did two years ago. I can't get an answer from Verizon. I think it has to do with the transcoding that takes place. I am not sure if VZ does this in-house or outsource it. Granted, I probably had the set-top box using Mpeg-2 codec and now it probably uses Mpeg-4 but that shouldn't make a difference, running RG6 Q4 cable to the box then HDMI to my TV. To my knowledge there isn't enough bandwidth to send uncompressed 1080p video signals through cable so you have these signals (channels) compressed at a source then to your box.

I watch HD channels that is why I got FIOSTV...not to watch artifacts in HD.

Any help?

 
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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
theophilus
Newbie

I've seen the macro blocking you mention with my FiOS service.  It seems to happen during changes between dark to light, and is different than the fast motion HD macro blocking I experienced with Comcast during fast camera pans.  The much smaller blocks I see with Verizon are visible during fades in from black, with no camera panning at all.  But, the blocks are smaller than those that I saw with Comcast that were a result of compression during fast motion.

In addition, I get a dropout of sound a couple of times about 4-5 seconds after pushing play on the DVR, and occasional video freezes during normal HD watching.  Add that to a bill that is significantly higher than I recall being quoted (and higher than my Comcast bill) prior to my switch, and I'm paying a LOT of money to be disappointed by a setup that has great potential but seems to be a few months (years??) away from reaching its potential.  If I wasn't paying for it, it'd be fun to work the bugs out of this product, but I am, so it's not fun.  I really disliked ComCast and their arrogance, and appreciate Verizon and their humility, but there's a limit to how much people can take paying for a product that doesn't meet what it's advertised to be.  If I didn't have a year contract, I might have switched back.  I will say that the Verizon phone services is 10x better than the IP service I had previously!!

Anyways, I'm hoping they quickly come out with some firmware upgrades to increase the DVR stability, as well as find a way to make their pricing a bit more competitive on the bundled package...

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
danvolts
Newbie

Customer Service is the worst I have ever experienced!  They no nothing and are not helpful-that is if you are lucky to get through.  Be prepared to be put on hold and if you do not have a land-line WATCH OUT! You do not exist and they cannot find your account.

The picture is great but the recent problem of channels being unavailable is very irritating. I am thinking of switching to Direct TV so I can get NFL Ticket.

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
McCleud
Enthusiast - Level 3

Are You Happy with your FIOS? Nope.

The system is full of bugs, glitches, the guide is the worst piece of trash of a guide I've ever experienced and the lack of expansion space is going to drive me and quite a few others away soon if no official timeline is given I bet.

I've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but we're paying way too much for such a jumbled mess of overall service.

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Re: Are You Happy with your FIOS?
Tireman
Enthusiast - Level 2

I'm not happy with it at all for a lot of the same reasons already mentioned, but mainly for the inferior DVRs and crappy guide

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artifacts
Stokestack
Newbie

"Is there anyone out there that can answer my question regarding compression artifacts that occur on screen. Do you see in intense frames like flash photography or concert strobe lights a macro-blocking effect that degrades the picture quality like a bad jpeg movie for the amount of time that there is action on the screen and then return back to normal HD with no artifacts with still or no action scenes?"

Yes.  That's the fraud of what's being called "HD", and sadly it is the future of all video. There are no uncompressed HD sources for the home; you'll see these artifacts on FIOS, digital cable, Blu-Ray, and (worst of all) DirecTV.  And when all we're left with is downloadable or streaming content, it's going to get WAY WORSE.

There are too few people demanding high quality, and therefore high quality is no longer available.  It's true in every category of consumer goods.

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